


Hold Your Friends Close

by wakeupnew



Category: Sungkyunkwan Scandal
Genre: Alternate History, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wakeupnew/pseuds/wakeupnew
Summary: Jae-shin has never considered the prospect of a Joseon without Yong-ha. He is immutable. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, striking a man in the face with an open palm will break his nose, and Gu Yong-ha is an irrepressible, vain, brilliant flirt. He is a constant of fifteen years: impossible and infuriating and painfully loyal.The sudden prospect of him being gone? Well.It changes things.
Relationships: Gu Yong Ha/Moon Jae Shin, background Cho Seon/Kim Yoon Hee/Lee Sun Joon
Comments: 11
Kudos: 91
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Hold Your Friends Close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [specialrhino](https://archiveofourown.org/users/specialrhino/gifts).



Gu Yong-ha has many gifts: talking himself into and out of trouble, manipulating people into positions that entertain him, recognizing counterfeit silks from fifty paces. His most irritating talent, though, is his ability to turn up whenever Moon Jae-shin wants to see him least.

Jae-shin doesn’t need to look down to know that Yong-ha has found him once again. He recognizes the lightness of the footsteps and the tap of beads. He allows himself one sullen moment of hope that maybe Yong-ha has just happened to pause beneath the very tree in which Jae-shin has perched himself.

Then Yong-ha shatters that hope. “Ah, Geol-oh!” he calls up cheerfully. “Are you trying to fly away?”

“Go away.”

Jae-shin doesn’t think Yong-ha has ever once heeded being told to go away. He has spent the last six years dogging Jae-shin’s footsteps — once a smaller shadow trailing along at Jae-shin’s heels, now one who’s nearly as tall as Jae-shin himself.

Yong-ha’s growth spurt of the last year or two hasn’t helped his physical fitness at all. There’s a scratching sound against the tree trunk below, and Jae-shin sighs sharply and looks down.

Yong-ha is making a truly depressing attempt to clamber into the enormous old tree that Jae-shin had perched himself in. As Jae-shin watches, Yong-ha wraps his arms around the lowest branch again, kicks his feet up, and manages to climb up a few footholds before pathetically falling back again. It would be funny, on another day.

“I’m not in a mood for your nonsense,” Jae-shin says darkly.

“I’m wounded,” Yong-ha says, pressing a dramatic hand to his heart. Jae-shin wishes he actually was, because then he might go away, but he’s impossible to offend. Jae-shin should know — he has genuinely tried, on multiple occasions. “Help me up.”

“You’re going to rip your jeogori,” Jae-shin says. It’s his last line of defense.

Yong-ha pauses and looks down at himself. Even with his gat shielding his downturned face, Jae-shin can imagine the calculations happening in his eyes. As always, Yong-ha is dressed in absurd finery. Today’s jeogori is bright green, embroidered with tiny detailed patterns in pink thread, and his two-tiered sleeves are pristine white and an eye-searing shade of pink. His impractical stupid flat shoes aren’t going to survive climbing a tree above the shops in the merchant district.

“I’m touched by your concern, Geol-oh.” Yong-ha beams up at him. He absolutely knows Jae-shin only said it in an attempt to get rid of him. He reaches up with an impatient gesture, fingers wiggling. “Come on, give me your hand.”

The longer Yong-ha stands down there flapping his mouth, the more people are going to look up and spot Jae-shin among the leaves. Jae-shin heaves an irritated sigh, then crouches down, braces himself against the enormous branch he’s been standing on, and clasps Yong-ha’s outstretched hand.

With a few hard yanks from Jae-shin and some highly undignified scrabbling from Yong-ha, they haul Yong-ha up into the tree. It takes much more effort than it would have just last year or the year before. Yong-ha is no longer a gangly child with a mouth that his fists can’t back up. (Now he is a young master of moderate height with a mouth that his fists still can’t back up.)

“Ooh.” Yong-ha glances down, then hurriedly scrambles to sit with his back against the tree trunk and his legs dangling down either side of the branch. “It’s high, don’t you think?”

Jae-shin tosses him an unconcerned look. “Not especially.”

Yong-ha slowly starts to lift up one leg, doubtless to strike a nonchalant pose, but he wobbles, yelps, and immediately drops his leg again, then tries to look like he meant to do that all along.

Against his will, Jae-shin gives a small, disbelieving huff of amusement and glances away. Below their feet, customers stroll through the dust as middlemen hawk wares and beckon them into merchants’ shops. The sun is beginning to set, casting everything with a warm, inviting orange light that makes Jae-shin feel a renewed twinge of anger. The day has no right to be so beautiful.

Yong-ha splays out a hand and casually inspects the state of his nails. “I stopped by your father’s house to find you. Your tutor said there was an argument and you stormed off in this direction.”

“I don’t need a minder.”

“I agree,” says Yong-ha, light and deliberately obtuse. “You wouldn’t need a tutor if you didn’t skip half our lessons at the seowon.”

A spike of resentment stabs Jae-shin’s chest again. His tutor already won’t shut his mouth about the Sungkyunkwan entrance exams, and now Yong-ha wants to add himself to the chorus? “I have enough people nagging me,” he snaps. “Do you want to be thrown out of the tree?”

Yong-ha jokingly lifts a hand, palm out, as if to say that he comes in peace. “Okay, okay,” he says quickly. They fall into the silence that Jae-shin wanted in the first place, but the wind rustles the leaves around them and people talk in the street below, and it’s all infuriatingly normal for a Joseon that swallowed Moon Young-shin whole while sparing Jae-shin’s coward of a father.

Sitting with his knees drawn up and arms crossed on top, Jae-shin squeezes one hand into a tight fist.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jae-shin sees the flash of pink that means Yong-ha is moving again. With overexaggerated care, Yong-ha leans away from the relative safety of the tree trunk until he can rest his own folded arms over Jae-shin’s. The move brings their faces just a few finger-widths apart.

Jae-shin glares at him from this new position, but as usual, it has little to no quelling effect on Gu Yong-ha.

“Do you know what this evening needs?” Yong-ha asks. This close, his face is mostly a blur, but his question is audibly smug and suggestive and Jae-shin can see him bat his eyelashes with deliberate slowness.

“If you say girls—” Jae-shin threatens. He feels the looming threat of a hiccup at just the thought of what Yong-ha might be suggesting. Jae-shin’s impossibly strange and infuriating childhood friend has somehow fashioned himself into a successful ladies’ man recently. Jae-shin put up with a campaign of terror for several months last year when Yong-ha realized that Jae-shin’s discomfort around eligible girls wasn’t going away and Yong-ha became both highly amused and also determined to snap him out of it.

“Geol-oh, Geol-oh, Geol-oh,” Yong-ha clucks. “Girls aren’t the answer to everything.” Jae-shin can hear his smile broaden in the sound of his voice. “Just most things.”

Jae-shin rolls his eyes. He sits back, pulling his arms and knees out from under Yong-ha all at once. Yong-ha yips and frantically flails for balance until Jae-shin grabs a handful of the front of his jeoguri and steadies him.

“Aigoo, you saved my life!” Yong-ha insists, wide-eyed. Then he glances down and frowns, and fastidiously tries to flatten out the wrinkles that Jae-shin’s grip put into the green silk.

Jae-shin only saved him from hurting his pride; they aren’t that far off the ground. He snorts. “I should have let you fall,” he says. “I told you I wanted to be alone.”

Yong-ha slowly lifts his head. “If that’s truly the case, would you have run to the merchant district?” There’s something knowing and blithe in his expression.

“Shut your mouth,” Jae-shin says, knowing it sounds petulant and that Yong-ha isn’t wrong. If he really had wanted to avoid Yong-ha’s company, he should have gone anywhere other than straight to the district that Yong-ha has been roaming since he could barely say his own name.

Yong-ha clearly knows it, too. He smiles from ear to ear. “Let’s go,” he says. He pats Jae-shin’s knee several times. “The night needs jjinppang, and I know exactly where to get them.”

“It’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Jae-shin allows. There’s plenty of competition for that particular title; this is nowhere close. Jae-shin has a weakness for jjinppang, and if Yong-ha is suggesting the market stall that Jae-shin thinks he is, Jae-shin will be glad to see the no-nonsense ajumma who runs it. She always rails against the corruption of the Hanseongbu and slips Jae-shin extra red bean paste.

“Of course it isn’t,” says Yong-ha. He strikes a pose, hands held aloft. “I’m Gu Yong-ha.” A gust of wind sweeps down through the leaves, and he makes a startled noise and drops his smug pose to quickly grab the branch beneath him again.

Jae-shin laughs and swings down to the ground. A woman shrieks as he lands next to her, and it’s hard to say which one of them jumps higher — she stomps off in a huff while Jae-shin is still reeling.

There’s applause from up in the tree. “The smoothest of landings, Geol-oh,” Yong-ha says with mocking admiration, grinning.

“You don’t need to be present for me to get jjinppang,” Jae-shin points out, and he takes a few steps away from the tree.

Predictably, Yong-ha’s face freezes. He forces an obviously-nervous laugh. “You wouldn’t really leave me up here.”

He looks ludicrous teetering on a low-hanging branch, wearing the finest silk money can buy. The beads hanging from his gat alone probably cost more than all of Jae-shin’s clothing combined.

The sight cheers Jae-shin immensely. “I would,” he says, with something approaching cheer, and he takes a few more steps.

“Ah! Geol-oh! I may have been hasty! It was supportive clapping!” he calls, and Jae-shin takes his time in slowly strolling back to the tree.

He looks up at Yong-ha. “Supportive clapping?”

Yong-ha demonstrates, applauding feverishly. “You see? I was expressing my admiration of your people skills.”

“You shouldn’t lie,” Jae-shin drawls. “It’ll become a habit.”

“Yes yes, fine, it’s a habit,” Yong-ha says impatiently. “Just let me—” He turns around and starts cautiously, awkwardly trying to wiggle his way backwards out of the tree.

Jae-shin watches him struggle, letting Yong-ha’s steady stream of chatter continue as he keeps slowly sliding down the tree trunk — “Geol-oh? Geol-oh, just a hand, if you would; it’s not so... Geol-oh!” — before Jae-shin finally steps in, shaking his head and holding back a laugh.

Jae-shin wraps an arm around Yong-ha’s legs above the knees so Yong-ha won’t keep trying to support his full weight hanging from the tree on his paper-thin arms. Yong-ha, of course, immediately lets go of the branch entirely and somehow frantically grabs hold of Jae-shin’s shoulder even with his back to him.

Jae-shin staggers, swearing, and just barely manages to drop Yong-ha onto his feet. The second his shoes hit the ground, Yong-ha spins around and plasters himself to Jae-shin.

“You’ve saved me again! Truly an auspicious day!” Jae-shin has known Gu Yong-ha for six years, and still, he can’t always be sure of when he’s joking. In this particular case, he thinks he’s half-serious — the ridiculous fear was real, anyway.

For a boy who couldn’t hold up his own weight a moment ago, Yong-ha gives strong hugs. He’s warm and surprisingly solid and it takes two tries for Jae-shin to dislodge himself from his jellyfish arms. Rather than being fazed by being shoved back, Yong-ha starts dusting himself off and trying to set his clothing to rights. There won’t be any fixing it. There’s dirt and tree sap smeared all down his chest and stomach, and several obvious tears in the delicate fabric. His white sleeves are impossibly stained.

Yong-ha grimaces but, to Jae-shin’s surprise, he doesn’t insist on stopping at his home to change. Instead, he glances at Jae-shin and cocks his head to one side. “You’re getting very strong,” Yong-ha says, patting at Jae-shin’s bicep, and Jae-shin swats his hand away.

“Just some exercise,” he says, glancing away, because Yong-ha doesn’t need to know that he’s been training ferociously to one day, somehow, honor his brother’s memory. He gives Yong-ha a push to try to herd him ahead of him. “Come on already.”

Yong-ha gives him a long look that Jae-shin doesn’t know how to read. Jae-shin shifts his weight, suddenly feeling like he’s getting ready for a training session, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

Then Yong-ha grins broadly and like that, the spell is broken. “Oh Geol-oh, if only I knew before that jjinppang were the key to your heart.” He twirls and when the spin tucks him in against Jae-shin’s side, he thumps a warm arm across the back of Jae-shin’s shoulders.

The sun has just slipped beneath the horizon when they reach the jjinppang stall together. The ajumma is beginning to close up for the night but she stops when she sees them. She greets Yong-ha with sharp words as always, and the two of them perch on crates and Yong-ha shamelessly encourages tart gossip about her nearest neighbors in the market while Jae-shin puts himself to work breaking down her stall.

By the time he’s through, his loose hair is damp with sweat and his arms are burning, and the ajumma thanks him with the farewell gift of a small sack of the day’s rejected jjinppang that didn’t sell — buns that were too fluffy or burst because they were overstuffed.

Yong-ha spends the walk back through the merchant district making increasingly handsy, ludicrous attempts to steal jjinppang as Jae-shin fends him off.

Jae-shin is curled up half-asleep in warm bedding on Yong-ha’s floor, listening to Yong-ha softly snore, when he finally realizes that he hasn’t thought about his father or his tutor or his meaningless future in hours.

* * *

Moon Jae-shin knew it was a mistake to bring up Ha In-soo, but he couldn't help himself and now he's reaping the consequences.

"Geol-oh," coos Gu Yong-ha, in the delighted tone that always makes Jae-shin suspicious purely on principle.

Jae-shin glances over. Trotting across the grounds of Sungkyunkwan at his side, Yong-ha is smiling in the way that rarely means anything good.

"Are you jealous? Are you worried you've lost my eternal friendship?" Yong-ha leans in and hooks his arm around the back of Jae-shin's neck, suddenly a warm weight against his side, dragging him down with every step they take. "Your concern is noted, but there's no—"

"You think this is one of your jokes?" Jae-shin demands as he comes to a halt and elbows him. Yong-ha whuffs a protesting noise but doesn't let go until Jae-shin does it again, hard enough that Yong-ha staggers away from him with a hand pressed against his lower ribs and a theatrical pained expression.

"Aigoo," he complains, "if you wanted to spend more quality time together, all you had to do was ask."

Jae-shin ignores that, swinging around to face him. "He's a Noron," he says.

Yong-ha straightens up from his dramatic half-crouch, hand falling away from his side. There's something challenging in his eyes and the curve of his smile now: the thing that, in moments here and there, makes Jae-shin feel that allowing Yong-ha to be friendly with him is like being friendly with a tiger while holding its tail.

"Restrict my relationships with our classmates based on political faction? Have you forgotten?" He leans in, amusement writ large across his expression before he’s too close for Jae-shin to make out anything but the blur of his face. "I am Gu Yong-ha."

Jae-shin doesn't like it when he does that. It makes something prickle and itch under his skin. He's found it's best, though, if he doesn't react, either shoving Yong-ha away with the ease of long practice or waiting stoically. This time, he pauses a half a beat, and then just as he's about to raise a hand to the middle of Yong-ha's face to push his head back, Yong-ha rocks back onto his heels on his own accord. He's smirking.

“Jealousy doesn't become you, Geol-oh,” he says.

Jae-shin rolls his eyes. "He's a punk."

Yong-ha makes a show of looking disbelieving. "If I listened to you, I'd believe every person in Joseon was a punk." He pats Jae-shin on the shoulder, more than a little condescending, and makes as if he's going to step past him.

Jae-shin grabs his arm just above the elbow and is rewarded by a moment of clear astonishment from Yong-ha as he looks first at Jae-shin's hand and then up at his face.

“Ha In-soo isn't like the rest of those Noron idiots — he's dangerous. What are you playing at, huh?"

They both know what he's making veiled reference to: what Jae-shin knows, and has known since they were children. Yong-ha’s carefully-guarded family secret.

Yong-ha watches him for a moment, and then his expression lightens and he sighs, "Geol-oh, Geol-oh," as he pats Jae-shin's hand. "Scholar Ha In-soo and his little band of ducklings entertain me."

When Jae-shin shoots him a look and lets go of his arm, Yong-ha makes a show of fastidiously adjusting his pink sleeve. "And at any rate, Sungkyunkwan is due for a new head scholar, and it’s helpful to cultivate acquaintanceships with successful people.” He cuts a glance at Jae-shin, who folds his arms and lets the dig wash over him.

“Sitting close to power is the safest place to be." Yong-ha taps Jae-shin's cheek with his open palm, gesture there and gone before Jae-shin has time to smack him away. "You'll see."

Jae-shin scoffs.

"You know, I wouldn't have to seek out new friendships if you didn't disappear like the wind whenever it suits you," Yong-ha says, somehow wry and slyly pouty at the same time, and Jae-shin shakes his head, glancing up into the branches of the tree they’re standing beneath.

Yong-ha huffs and all humor drops out of his voice. "If you continue to lose points at the same rate as last year, you're going to fail again."

Jae-shin finds Yong-ha looking at him with all-too-obvious concern. "You have to go to class," Yong-ha says.

If there's anything that Jae-shin hates more than when Yong-ha peers into his face like he's planning to study the back of his brain, it's when Yong-ha turns on him with that worried expression. It never sits right on his mischievous, cunning face.

"There you go again," Jae-shin says, rolling his eyes. "I'll go tomorrow."

Yong-ha lifts his eyebrows, studying him, and Jae-shin looks back at him flatly. "You will," says Yong-ha, and Jae-shin forgets about the conversation until the next morning.

He scales the Sungkyunkwan walls when dawn is just beginning to break, having gambled long enough and drunk enough terrible soju that the climb is more of an effort than it should be. When he opens the door to his room, it's empty, as it ought to be — his two roommates both chose to move after their first meeting with Sungkyunkwan's Crazy Horse. He sprawls out on the floor with a grunt, throwing his arm across his eyes to block the weak sunlight beginning to stream in through the paper, and he settles in.

He wakes to the ringing of the bell, the runners and pageboys shouting, and rolls over to ignore it. The door opens. He knows who it is — only one man dares to walk into his room so boldly — before Yong-ha even says, "Oh, Geol-oh, you're awake, that's good."

He hears him step over him and he blindly slaps in the general direction of the fabric that trails across his arm but he's too slow; Yong-ha is already past him, audibly digging through Jae-shin’s few belongings. He's continuing to prattle, something about the newest gisaeng at Moran-gak and her appalling level of musical skill on the gayageum.

Jae-shin wraps both arms over his head. He's almost asleep again, Yong-ha's voice a strangely soothing background hum, when something is dropped on his face.

"Look at that; you do still have a scholar's uniform," Yong-ha says, sounding pleased with himself.

Jae-shin grunts and blearily sits up. The hat and blue robes that Yong-ha had dumped on his head tumble into his lap with the motion.

Yong-ha himself is leaning against the wall, dressed for class, toying with a fan and watching him with the innocent expression that Jae-shin knows means he's on the edge of a smirk. Yong-ha will be expecting a fight, one that he'll win by relentlessly wearing Jae-shin down with his nonsense, and — struck by the need to move against the machinations of Gu Yong-ha — Jae-shin unties his sash in one furious tug and shucks off his tattered jeogori.

Yong-ha raises his eyebrows. He opens his ornate, embellished fan with the neat flick of a wrist and waggles it at his face.

Jae-shin rolls his eyes and rises to his feet, lifting his hands to the jeoksam he was wearing beneath.

Yong-ha tilts his head and fans himself harder, now smirking. Jae-shin removes his hands from his clothing, lays them on Yong-ha, and shoves him out the door, Yong-ha squirming like an eel and protesting the whole way.

Jae-shin is dressed all too late for breakfast, but he finds Yong-ha leaning against a tree outside the lecture hall, waiting for him.

"You could have let me watch," Yong-ha complains and, ignoring the unimpressed sideways glance Jae-shin shoots him, he adds, "I thought you went back to sleep again."

"How would I do that when there's a shadow annoying me all the time?" Jae-shin demands, and he determinedly doesn't let his scowl lessen when Yong-ha produces an apple from the sleeve of his robe and tosses it to him.

"To your health," Yong-ha says, brimming over with obnoxious self-satisfaction, and he strolls away with a wink, presumably off to his own class.

Jae-shin looks at the door to the lecture hall, the last few scholars rushing past him to enter, and he thinks about turning and walking away. He looks down at the apple in his hand.

Yong-ha has expectations for him. They’re low expectations, granted, and largely selfish ones — attend class, take exams, don’t get thrown out of Sungkyunkwan while Yong-ha is still a student here — but he’s one of very few people in Jae-shin’s life who persists in having them. Most of the time Yong-ha is so merry and conniving that Jae-shin can easily forget all about it, but when Yong-ha gives him sincere, worried looks that are just shy of pleading and asks him to go to class, it makes his stomach turn over.

Jae-shin goes to class.

He folds his arms on the desk and takes a nap for two hours in the back row, granted. Professor Park allows it, presumably due to shock that he's there at all.

Jae-shin sleeps in a tree that night and spends the next three days drinking, fighting, and gambling his way through Bancheon.

It’s just what people expect of him, Jae-shin tells himself.

It doesn’t matter. None of it does. There's no point to being here, sitting in classrooms listening to spoiled first sons recite Confucius. There's little point to anything in a Joseon without Moon Young-shin.

Moon Jae-shin lazes the summer days away, and in the winter, when it finally grows too cold to sleep beneath carts in the market, he spends his days reading every book he can get his hands on in the library.

At the end of the year, he fails again. His father isn’t even furious; only resigned. Jae-shin doesn’t return to his father's home.

“Aigoo, I told you this would happen,” Yong-ha complains. He swats at Jae-shin with his fan. “Now we won’t be in the same classes!”

“We haven’t been in the same classes since our first year.” 

Jae-shin knows that Yong-ha has a bottle of soju somewhere in this ridiculously fancy room, and that it’s the good stuff. He continues opening and closing panels in Yong-ha's furniture in his quest to find it. If Yong-ha is going to lecture him, he's at least going to have a drink during the process.

“But now we really won’t be,” Yong-ha persists. “Do you know how much effort I have to put in to find you, these days? You know how I feel about effort.”

“It’s boring,” Jae-shin quotes, rolling his eyes, at the same time that Yong-ha says it too. Jae-shin gives up on finding the soju and thumps down to sit on the floor in front of Yong-ha's table. “So stop putting it in, then.”

“The … effort,” Yong-ha says slowly.

A rush of prickling heat sweeps over Jae-shin at the suggestive implication, but Yong-ha is baiting for a reaction and Jae-shin refuses to give him one.

“If you value the company of Ha In-soo and his morons so much, go be with them and leave me alone,” Jae-shin grumbles, and then a hand lowers a cup onto the table in front of him with a clink, and he follows the hand up Yong-ha’s arm to his face. With a flourish, Yong-ha lifts up his sleeve and then pours the cup of soju from the pitcher that Jae-shin couldn't find. His form is excellent — as professional as one would expect from a man who spends as much time having drinks poured for him at Moran-gak as Yong-ha does.

“I knew you were jealous,” Yong-ha says, beaming with unbearable smugness.

Jae-shin deeply regrets allowing Yong-ha to drag him back to his room, and also most of his life choices.

He scoffs. “What's there to be jealous of? It’s your business if you want to follow that punk like one of his dogs.”

As always, it is constitutionally impossible to offend Gu Yong-ha. He sets down the pitcher of soju and then hands the cup to Jae-shin. “I would make a very fine dog,” he decides, and then he lifts up his hands like paws and gives a small, “Arf arf!” that he clearly thinks is charming.

Jae-shin snorts and swigs from the cup.

He does, to be honest, see less of Yong-ha now than he once did. Yong-ha is correct in that Jae-shin now having failed twice keeps them apart in the classroom, and outside of it, Yong-ha continues to spend a great deal of time and energy cultivating relationships with those close to Ha In-soo.

Moon Jae-shin has spent so many years dogged by Yong-ha’s constant presence that it almost came as a surprise, at first, when he missed him. But still, Yong-ha has a habit of popping up to lean into his space or tug at his arm, smirking at him in that way that has been vaguely unsettling ever since they were children, the way he did again this afternoon. 

“If you’re going to drink my excellent soju, you could at least admire my new jeogori,” Yong-ha says, spreading his arms to display the purple material. It has a sheen and there’s some kind of tiny, intricate red pattern crawling up the sleeves. “Silk from China’s finest traders!” 

Jae-shin rolls his eyes and drinks more soju, and Yong-ha tells him he has no taste. By the time he looks up, Yong-ha has already grown distracted and is happily petting his own sleeve, clearly delighted by his newest acquisition. 

After a year of reading through the Sungkyunkwan library and the surprise discovery of a trove of Moon Young-shin’s writings several months earlier, Moon Jae-shin finally knows what he’s going to do to keep his brother’s memory alive. It’s for the best if Yong-ha remains preoccupied by his treasures and toying with Ha In-soo.

Yong-ha glances up. “Why Geol-oh,” he says, his tone deceptively light. He languidly leans forward over the table, chin in his hand, but there’s a tiny furrow between his eyebrows as he regards Jae-shin. “That’s a very serious look.”

“The soju’s no good,” Jae-shin deadpans, which immediately sends Yong-ha into an outraged, impassioned defense of the soju’s exclusive provenance.

There’s no space for Gu Yong-ha, spinning and winking in whirls of bright fabric, in a dangerous moral undertaking that requires sprinting across rooftops in the dead of night to escape arrest at the hands of the city guard and the War Minister’s forces. Jae-shin doesn’t know what would be worse: if Yong-ha didn’t understand, or if he did.

Distance is safer.

* * *

Moon Jae-shin isn’t terribly surprised when the sound of raised voices leads him to the market’s busiest street. Two finely-dressed merchants loudly argue in the middle of the path as other sellers, middlemen, and curious customers begin to surround them.

Jae-shin stays back, leaning against a pillar in the shadows of another storefront. While he may be a member of the royal guard, his shift is over and he isn’t keen to break up a verbal argument between two merchants. He can wait and see what happens.

The older of the two men is going red in the face. “I know you stole my supplier!” he’s insisting. “It was an exclusive contract!”

“I did no such thing!” the shorter merchant insists. His voice is thin and trembling and his hanbok not nearly so fine, but he’s indignantly holding his ground. “Why would I need a shipment of cheap imitation beads from Jeolla when I sell the finest of glasswork from Choongcheong?”

The older man makes a noise like a wounded bull and bellows, “Why you— You’re a thief! Thief!” 

Jae-shin has seen enough. He starts pushing toward the two combatants, the crowd giving way before the uniform of the royal guard, but then a confident voice slices through the crowd. 

“That would be a very simple answer, don’t you think?”

Jae-shin’s eyes cut straight to Gu Yong-ha. He stands in front of his own closed-up shop, absently spinning something in his hand that Jae-shin can’t make out from a distance. He appears to be paying more attention to whatever his little game is, but Jae-shin knows him well enough to realize that he’s closely watching the heated argument out of the corner of his eye. Amusement toys at the corners of his mouth. 

“What do _you_ know about it?” the elder merchant snaps.

Yong-ha turns to fully face him. “Oh, nothing, of course,” he says, the picture of innocent, thoughtful solicitousness. “But it occurs to me that it’s very difficult to extract oneself from an exclusive contract, even if the product quality proves to be subpar. How fortunate that it was broken for you, Bok Myeong-soo-ssi!” He beams at the merchant.

“Are you accusing me of — of what, stealing my own goods and planting them at that worthless upstart’s table?” Bok Myeong-soo roars.

“That would be a very specific accusation to make,” Yong-ha says, clearly enjoying himself now. 

The merchant’s mouth opens and closes like a fish. 

Voices rise, whispers rolling through the crowd. Someone says something uncomplimentary about Bok Myeong-soo’s ancestors, as Jae-shin pushes past him, and doesn’t say it very quietly.

Bok Myeong-soo glances around himself and shifts his weight uncomfortably. His face is beginning to shine with sweat. “It — it would be,” he says, frantically trying to seize back control of the conversation.

“Which is why I’m not making it, of course,” Yong-ha says, and Jae-shin smiles and shakes his head to himself. “Such a terrible situation that you find yourself in, Bok Myeong-soo-ssi; best of luck to you in working out what has happened to your exclusive contract. Ah, Geol-oh!” 

As if he’s only just noticing Jae-shin’s approach — which Jae-shin knows for a pure fabrication, since Gu Yong-ha always spots him coming from hundreds of paces — Yong-ha lifts a hand to wave at him dramatically.

Anyone who hadn’t seen a royal guard moving through the crowd sees him now. Yong-ha has made certain of that. Bok Myeong-soo sways on his feet. He’s not a subtle cheat.

Yong-ha sweeps grandly over to Jae-shin, and punctuates with a spin that was probably calculated to show off his outfit to its fullest effect. “Are you ready for our meeting with the king?”

Behind Yong-ha, Bok Myeong-soo gives a low moan of distress.

Uncomfortably aware of all the eyes on him, Jae-shin says, “Come on,” and jerks his head back toward the palace. 

Rather than moving, Yong-ha stands there giving him an amused look — probably waiting for him to realize that there are women in the crowd and to start hiccuping, knowing Yong-ha.

Jae-shin takes his arm and says firmly, “We’re going,” and tows him along for the first few steps.

Yong-ha’s bicep feels tense beneath Jae-shin’s hand; he’s allowing himself to be tugged and is laughing. “Ooh, Geol-oh, so forceful!”

In their wake, several voices begin to shout about cheaters. This is the city guard’s and the Hanseungbu’s beat, not Moon Jae-shin’s, and given the reforms that have taken place over the last few years, they’ll doubtless be on the scene momentarily. Jae-shin only feels the slightest twinge about leaving the situation behind. 

Jae-shin releases Yong-ha once they’ve turned the corner and plunged into the ordinary afternoon hustle and bustle of the market. “How did you know? That the merchant was using his neighbor to try to break his contract.”

Yong-ha opens his mouth.

“You’re Gu Yong-ha,” Jae-shin says, shaking his head, and he laughs. “I know.” He claps the front of Yong-ha’s shoulder twice.

There’s a pause from Yong-ha, and when Jae-shin glances over at him, he looks uncharacteristically grave. “Bok Myeong-soo is a bully. He uses his words about exclusive deals and his influence to mark up his prices and abuse the new merchants whose success he resents.” 

Yong-ha means the merchants who have begun dealing since the king abolished the Trade Laws, Jae-shin knows — the ordinary people who were previously blocked from trading goods. The new traders have made inroads, with the support of the palace, but many of the merchants have done everything in their power to shut them out. The king wants to upend the stalwarts’ remaining resistance with the final stages of the capitol’s move to Hwaseong. A fresh start for Joseon.

With Yong-ha’s words in mind, now Jae-shin really doesn’t have any conflicting feelings on leaving Bok Myeong-soo to the tender mercies of his customers.

“Not anymore,” Jae-shin says, and when Yong-ha grins, it’s sharp. 

“His reputation will suffer greatly,” Yong-ha agrees, with obvious satisfaction.

With just a few words in a crowded marketplace, Yong-ha was able to cut down an influential merchant. The havoc that he could wreak in the palace — havoc on behalf of the king’s dream, Young-shin’s dream, that has slowly become Jae-shin’s dream too — rises to Jae-shin’s mind again. A smirking predator prowling the palace halls in floral pink hanbok.

“You did that very easily,” Jae-shin says, and before Yong-ha can have time to start preening — it’s only fact — he continues. “Are you still insisting you’ll stay in Hanseong when the palace moves?”

“You’re full of palace talk these days,” Yong-ha complains. “And wearing your palace uniform to meet with the king? How…” He gives Jae-shin a long, considering look up and down, and wrinkles his nose. “...uncreative.” 

“He doesn’t care what I wear,” Jae-shin says bluntly, both because it’s true and because it will rile Yong-ha.

Yong-ha hisses like an insulted cat and then visibly settles himself when Jae-shin cracks a grin. “Geol-oh, you can’t always rely on looking handsome in a uniform,” Yong-ha says, making an attempt to pinch at Jae-shin’s face. It’s unsuccessful, since they’re still walking and he isn’t difficult to dodge. “You need to put in effort sometimes!”

Yong-ha is never serious. “I could have left you in the market and had time to go change, but instead I came to you,” Jae-shin points out.

Yong-ha presses a hand to his own heart. Pretending to swoon, he nearly stumbles when Jae-shin doesn’t reach out to steady him the way he was clearly aiming for. Still, Yong-ha cries, “I’m moved!” 

Jae-shin snorts, and Yong-ha pops back up to walk beside him like a normal person again. Or, well. As normal as Yong-ha ever gets. Jae-shin can practically feel Yong-ha peering at him. “Do you know why we were summoned, with all of your palace insider information?”

Jae-shin shrugs. “The king goes to Hwaseong soon. He could want to see us beforehand.” Jae-shin knows that Yoon-hee and Seon-joon regularly meet with the king, as two of his most trusted advisors. Jae-shin has more limited interactions with him and so does Yong-ha, but every once in a great while a royal summons arrives for all four of them. While Jae-shin serves in the royal guard and has come around to believe in the king’s vision for a new Joseon to benefit all of Joseon, he has never grown fully comfortable meeting with royalty.

Yong-ha sighs. “Hwaseong, Hwaseong, Hwaseong. It’s all anyone will talk about anymore.”

Anyone except Gu Yong-ha, who has been avoiding all discussion of the fact that Moon Jae-shin is due to permanently move to Hwaseong with the rest of the royal guard at the end of the month.

Jae-shin opens his mouth, and then Yong-ha’s face brightens and he says, “I spy my favorite professors.” He waves, red sleeve flapping like a flag. “Daemul! Garang!”

Yong-ha forges ahead and, in front of the public house where they agreed to meet, greets Kim Yoon-hee and Lee Seon-joon like he hasn’t seen them in years when in actuality it can’t have been more than a few weeks since he was last at Sungkyunkwan. His designs are popular among the students, women and men alike. Yoon-hee shouts with joyous laughter and Seon-joon cracks a smile as Yong-ha cheerfully insults his facial hair, and Jae-shin smiles, too, watching the three of them.

Yoon-hee greets him first, as she almost always does. “Seonbae,” she says, her face bright. “I hear you have complaints?”

“Your students’ grammar is terrible,” he says, and she laughs again. 

Once, her laugh would have set his heart racing. It would have warmed him to know that he caused it. It still does now, but not in the same way it once did. Yoon-hee has not driven Jae-shin to hiccups in a long time. She’s still smart, mischievous, brave, funny, beautiful, but she’s also one of his oldest and most trusted friends.

“I’ll have to be a harsher professor,” she says, grinning, as the four of them filter inside to a table together. 

“You’re too patient with them,” says Lee Seon-joon, and Yoon-hee fondly rolls her eyes. Jae-shin has heard them have variations on this argument on multiple occasions.

“Geol-oh marks up their leaflets,” Yong-ha says, ruthlessly exposing Jae-shin. “Geol-oh, show her.”

Jae-shin snorts. “I don’t carry them with me on a daily basis.”

“Luckily for you,” says Yong-ha, reaching into his sleeve, “I do.” He produces a familiar blue scrap of fabric with a dramatic flourish and Yoon-hee claps as Seon-joon reaches out for it.

Jae-shin stares at him in disbelieving judgement. “Have you been carrying that all day just for this?”

“Is it so much stranger than you carrying it while you’re patrolling just in case you can chase a Blue Messenger across a rooftop to shout at her?” Yong-ha asks innocently. Across the table, the professors are engrossed in reading Jae-shin’s comments. From the tenor of Yoon-hee's laughter, Jae-shin thinks they’re laughing at the hapless student and not at his corrections of her writing.

Jae-shin turns to face Yong-ha more fully. “You have time to steal that from me and plot against your neighboring shop, but you can’t consider what I keep asking you?” Jae-shin says, low, and Yong-ha laughs.

“Geol-oh,” he says, and he leans in. 

Barely aware that he’s doing it, Jae-shin sways in closer. 

Yong-ha says tartly, “Boring,” and taps him on the forehead with the palm of his hand. He flags down the proprietor. “A round of drinks for my friends!” 

*

They can’t drink too much, as respected members of society who will be answering a summons from the king at shinshi, but they split a pitcher between the four of them and Seon-joon’s face has taken on a hint of a flush even as he extols the virtues of the new educational system that the king has devised for the city’s children in Hwaseong. The man has relaxed in many ways, over the years that Jae-shin has known him, but he will never be able to hold his alcohol.

Yoon-hee nods in staunch agreement. “What use would the king’s brave new world free of political factions have been if families were still held back for not being yangban or for having girls?” 

“Or for loving,” Yong-ha says, pointed and shrewd. Yoon-hee immediately chokes on her drink and then starts coughing while Seon-joon reddens further. 

Yong-ha has spent the six months since Cho-seon’s recent return unceasingly trying to figure out if the three of them have reached an understanding of some kind. Given the reaction to his comment, it seems likely that the answer is yes — a possibility that Jae-shin found unusual at first but has had ample time to consider, thanks to all of Yong-ha’s unsubtle prodding. 

Knowing Yong-ha, he’s doubtless both delighted for their friends and also deeply insulted that they worked something out without consulting him. 

Jae-shin shakes his head at Yong-ha. If he took the same kind of single-minded attention that he gives to their friends’ lives and turned it on Joseon’s problems, he could have this entire last stage of the capital’s relocation complete within a week. “Stop sticking your head into others’ business. It’ll become a habit.”

Yong-ha peers at him, the look searching and unusually thoughtful, before breaking into a smirk. Before he can respond, Yoon-hee points out, “You might as well tell the sun not to rise.” She’s over her coughing bout, though she still looks twitchy. Jae-shin suspects she thinks that he and Yong-ha don’t know that Cho-seon is in her heart, too. Yoon-hee is the smartest person he has ever known, but has never been as secretive as she thinks she is.

Yong-ha has rested his chin in his hand and his elbow on the table, tapping his cheek in an indiscernible pattern. His gaze is on Jae-shin. “Geol-oh, are you trying to thwart me?”

“You need to be thwarted sometimes. It’s not good for anyone to get everything he wants all the time.”

Yong-ha stops, then, noticeable and abrupt. He pauses for a bare moment. “I don’t get everything that I want.”

That statement hangs for a moment, unusually bald for Gu Yong-ha. Jae-shin blinks and fully turns to look at him, and finds him busy drinking from his cup.

Across the table, Seon-joon clears his throat and asks, “How are you finding the royal guard, seonbae?”

“Full of idiots,” Jae-shin says, with another curious glance at Yong-ha. “But there’s promise.”

Yong-ha doesn’t look up from fiddling with his cup, and Jae-shin’s stomach drops. 

*

Seon-joon nearly trips as he’s exiting the public house, and when Jae-shin grabs his arm, he sees how pink Seon-joon’s face still is. “Garang, you’re as red as a radish,” he says, bemused.

Yoon-hee points and laughs at her husband. “You are!”

“Professor Lee, did you think it was appropriate to meet the king this way?” Yong-ha teases, with pretend horror. 

Within five minutes inside the public house, he had seemingly returned to his normal self, bemoaning the current craze for orange hanbok and insisting on pouring drinks. He had met Jae-shin’s eyes and made inappropriate comments and Jae-shin might have almost thought he had imagined that moment where Yong-ha stopped in his tracks as if he’d run into a tree, if Yong-ha hadn’t also spent the last several weeks making maudlin faces when he thought no one was paying attention to him. Jae-shin isn’t a fool. 

“I’m not drunk,” says Lee Seon-joon, and Jae-shin believes him. He’s very steady and his voice is even. That frown must send students into hysterics. It’s only his flush that is betraying him.

“Be that as it may, you can’t appear before the king like that,” Yong-ha laughs, and he’s not wrong. “Take a walk, Garang.” He makes a shooing motion with both hands. “We’ll walk slowly so you can stumble back to us before we reach the gates.”

Lee Seon-joon looks at the three of them — Jae-shin and Yong-ha both grinning, and Yoon-hee cackling at his expense. “I’m not drunk,” he says again, irritated, but he clearly sees the wisdom in Yong-ha’s suggestion to walk it off, as he turns away from them. 

“Don’t go into another public house!” Yoon-hee calls after him, and Seon-joon shoots her a betrayed look over his shoulder that sends her into another fit of giggles. He’s already almost out of sight, his long strides eating up ground. He will be able to make a circuit around the wealthy district surrounding the palace and catch up to them again swiftly. 

“Is this what married life is like? You might make a changed man of me yet,” Yong-ha says. He strolls along at Yoon-hee’s side like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“Oh, is your father still trying to arrange a match?” Yoon-hee asks, peering up at him.

Jae-shin stops dead in the street. “What?”

“I’m a free spirit, Daemul; I can’t be tied down,” Yong-ha says grandly, walking on with Yoon-hee, which is almost certainly a yes. 

Knowing Yong-ha’s father, Jae-shin suddenly has new insight into why Yong-ha has been spending so many late hours at his shop recently.

What Jae-shin doesn’t understand is why he has never mentioned it. 

“Hey,” he says, still standing flat-footed in the middle of the square, and both Yong-ha and Yoon-hee glance back at him. Yoon-hee looks inquisitive; Yong-ha looks — odd. Tired, somehow. It’s not an expression that belongs on his face. “What—”

The hair on the back of Jae-shin's neck stands straight up as his body registers the familiar hiss- _thunk_ before his mind has time to understand the sound. Nearby, a woman screams. Jae-shin spins and finds an arrow sunk deep into the doorway of a business across the street. Unusually, there’s no fluttering blue message attached.

The bow twangs again and someone else screams, people beginning to panic and scatter all around. Jae-shin whirls back, following the most likely trajectory of the first arrow, and looks up at the pitched roof above a building across the square. There’s an ungainly clatter of feet on slates, a flash of movement, and he takes his first few running steps after the unseen archer — and then he hears Yoon-hee.

“Seonbae!” she cries, with a ragged crack in her voice that sets his nerves alight, and Jae-shin turns around.

Yong-ha is staggering against Yoon-hee, one hand sinking toward the shaft of the arrow buried deep in his thigh.

Everything stops.

"Seonbae!" calls Yoon-hee sharply. Another arrow thunks into the dirt between where Jae-shin is standing and where Yoon-hee is now frantically trying to hold Yong-ha up and drag him toward the negligible cover of a low stone wall on the opposite side of the square.

Jae-shin lurches into motion. He catches up to Yoon-hee, throws his arm around Yong-ha’s other side — Yong-ha, who’s swooning and already halfway to the ground — and hauls him over behind the wall. 

Yong-ha slumps down as soon as Jae-shin releases him, the backs of his shoulders pressed against the stone. His fancy new yellow jeogori is beginning to stain dark red around the arrow. He still looks stunned, like he's so surprised that the pain hasn't even fully registered yet, his mouth hanging open.

Jae-shin glances up. Thanks to the angle, the archer shouldn’t have a clear shot from the rooftop that Jae-shin saw movement on. Even as he wildly thinks it, an arrow whistles in and embeds itself into the ground just beyond Yong-ha’s spread feet, and Jae-shin quickly reaches out and drags him closer. 

Yoon-hee huddles with them, her head ducked beneath the top of the wall, and she presses her hands around the arrow. When Yong-ha yelps and tries to arch away from her, she lunges to pin him down. 

Two more arrows strike the courtyard just beyond them. 

“What do we do?” Yoon-hee asks, wide-eyed but steady. 

Jae-shin can't stop staring down at Yong-ha. He's slumped back in Yoon-hee's arms, grimacing, already losing color in his face. This can't be happening. Yong-ha doesn't place himself in situations where he might bleed all over himself. Something dangerously close to panic thrums under Jae-shin's skin.

"Seonbae!" Yoon-hee shouts at him, as Yong-ha shifts restlessly in her arms like he might try to sit up.

Jae-shin shakes himself and moves all at once. He scrambles in, straddling Yong-ha's shins, and he grabs Yoon-hee’s hand just before she would have touched the arrow.

"Don't take it out."

" _Don't_ take it out?" Yong-ha demands, in a voice so strained as to be almost unrecognizable.

"Not until we've found a physician or ashes to pack the wound." Jae-shin lays both hands on the arrow and snaps the shaft. Yong-ha cries out and jerks; Yoon-hee struggles to push his shoulders down and Jae-shin leans on him with his forearm. Their faces are close. Jae-shin throws aside the broken arrow shaft and presses his hand over Yong-ha's mouth and says, "Shh."

There are the frightened voices of people taking shelter nearby. Distant shouting, slowly coming closer. And the scrabble of feet on a slate roof.

“The archer’s moving,” Jae-shin says, and he pops up — and Yoon-hee grabs his collar and _yanks_ him back down just as an arrow slices through the air where his head had been.

“We have to stay down!” she shouts at him, arrows raining down around them. The archer hasn’t found the right angle yet but is skilled enough to fire arrows at speed, quickly enough that if any of them try to rise again, they will be struck. 

Jae-shin’s hands itch for a bow, for someone to punch into a pulp, for anything he can do other than crouch uselessly with Yong-ha white-faced under him and his hand on Yoon-hee’s shoulder.

There’s silence again. Jae-shin looks down at Yong-ha — he has shut his eyes and is breathing heavily in Yoon-hee’s lap — then exchanges a glance with Yoon-hee. 

Several things happen all at once: the sound of swift footsteps, a surprised grunt, the sounds of two blows landing, and then faster steps running away. Jae-shin is already rising by the time a familiar sharp voice shouts, “Kim Yoon-hee!”

Lee Seon-joon is standing in the square, fists still raised, looking around wildly. 

Yoon-hee pops up. “Here!” she calls.

Jae-shin lifts his hand away from her shoulder. “Stay with him.” He vaults the stone wall, fury coursing through him with every step, hands shaking with it. “Who was he?" he demands of Seon-joon as he bears down on him. "Where did he go?”

“He wore a black mask; he ran back, away from the palace,” Seon-joon says, pointing unerringly down the street.

Jae-shin’s sprint abruptly comes to a halt before it can even fully begin when Seon-joon reaches out and grabs his arm. “Seonbae. Kim Yoon-hee—?” he asks urgently.

Seon-joon is staring down, Jae-shin realizes, at his guard uniform. It’s splattered with blood. “She’s fine. She’s not hurt.” He looks in the direction that Seon-joon had indicated again. There could be time; he could still catch the archer and tear him apart limb from limb.

“I’m fine!” Yoon-hee yells. “Come back and help us!”

But Jae-shin is the only person present who has pulled an arrow out of himself and treated his own wounds before, and Yong-ha is bleeding.

Yong-ha himself is apparently thinking along the same lines. "Our Geol-oh made this look much more glamorous than it is," Yong-ha is saying to Yoon-hee. 

Jae-shin starts to cross the square again, Seon-joon at his heels, as Yoon-hee laughs, the sound watery. "No one looks better than you. How could they?"

"Ah," Yong-ha says, and he audibly sucks in a breath through his teeth. "They couldn't, of course." 

Jae-shin jumps back over the wall and lands hard on his feet, beside Yoon-hee. She has one hand on Yong-ha’s forehead and a rock clutched in her other fist, which she lowers when she recognizes Jae-shin. 

Yong-ha winks at him with both eyes, as terrible at winking as ever. "Why Daemul," Yong-ha says, "I won't tell Cho-seon and Garang about this if you won't." What would undoubtedly normally be a purr now sounds alarmingly thin. He looks worse. The dark red stain is spreading across his jeoguri, pinned to his leg by the arrow. He's bleeding too much. Yoon-hee has rigged up a bandage from fabric torn from her sleeve, tied tightly above the broken shaft. Jae-shin crouches down to get a closer look at the wound and doesn’t glance back as he hears Seon-joon’s footfalls behind him. 

"Up," Jae-shin orders, and Yong-ha wheezes as Jae-shin pulls his arm around his neck and starts to lift him to sit up. Yoon-hee helps push him, but despite her outsized bravery and determination, she has never been one of the stronger members of their party.

“Hey Noron,” says Jae-shin, and he glances back. He finds Seon-joon staring down at Yoon-hee and Yong-ha, but when Jae-shin jerks his head to beckon him, Seon-joon shakes it off and jumps over the wall to take Yoon-hee’s place as she slides out from under Yong-ha. 

Working together, the three of them haul Yong-ha to his feet. Yong-ha feebly tries to help but he’s not holding most of his own weight. A few pained noises escape him but he’s largely quiet, which is more concerning than any complaining he could have done. 

“I’ll run ahead to the palace to find a physician,” Yoon-hee says, determined. “You’ll bring him?”

Jae-shin nods, and she nods back and takes off running.

Yong-ha coughs. “That Daemul, so industrious.” He hangs between Jae-shin and Seon-joon, an arm slung around each of their shoulders. They limp along, following the path left by Yoon-hee, though they won’t make fast progress like this. 

“It was my blood, not hers,” Yong-ha tells Seon-joon, clearly understanding, even now, that Seon-joon had momentarily been stricken when he saw his wife covered in blood. “She really shouldn’t take my blood without asking. It’s very rude; I expect better of our Daemul.” His wrist is trembling under Jae-shin’s hand. 

“Stop joking,” Jae-shin says tersely. “Save your strength for your legs, not your mouth.”

“Geol-oh, you’ve thought so much of my mouth?”

Seon-joon makes a noise but when Jae-shin looks over at him sharply, his expression is still grim. “We’re not so far from the palace,” he says awkwardly. He is a far warmer man now than the one Jae-shin first met, but some things never change: Lee Seon-joon does not excel at delivering comforting statements, even ones that are empirically true. With each step, the palace walls grow closer.

“Your bedside manner needs work, Garang,” Yong-ha says. 

“I’ll keep it in mind,” says Seon-joon, and Yong-ha cracks a laugh.

“Stop it,” Jae-shin says, sharp with the fear that’s pounding through him, and Yong-ha laughs again, then wheezes in a way that Jae-shin doesn’t like at all. He’s starting to drag his feet even more.

“Seonbae,” Seon-joon says. “It would be for the best if he keeps talking.”

He’s right, Jae-shin knows, as illogical as it feels. If Yong-ha is talking, he’s awake and alert. He clears his throat. “That must be the first time anyone has ever said that.”

Yong-ha grunts. “So cruel to a dying man!” he laments dramatically.

It feels like a physical blow. “You’re not dying,” Jae-shin snaps. 

People on the street are picking themselves up and are beginning to stare as the three of them pass by. It doesn’t look like anyone else was struck. Jae-shin reaches out and grabs the nearest man’s collar. “When the guards arrive, tell them it was a masked archer in black and he ran toward Mapo,” he tells the man, waiting for a frightened nod before he releases him.

Yong-ha, meanwhile, is still talking. “Both of you are terrible at this. I’ll take Daemul back. Let’s lie down and wait for her.”

“No,” say Jae-shin and Seon-joon together.

Yong-ha sighs and bows his head, which apparently gives him another look down at himself. “This was the first time I wore this,” he says mournfully. “Cut down in its prime.”

“You’re not funny,” Jae-shin says through gritted teeth.

“Who’s joking? This embroidery took six months!”

“Something that ugly took that long?”

Yong-ha exhales sharply. “Wash your mouth out. I’m too tired to hit you.” 

“You’re going to hit me,” Jae-shin says, encouragingly dubious.

“I punched you in the mouth once.”

He did. With surprising force, too, and without breaking his own hand. If Jae-shin had ever disbelieved that Yong-ha genuinely cared for him, that moment would have wiped away all doubt. His devastated face had said it all. Jae-shin can't think about that now.

“Geol-oh.”

“What?” asks Jae-shin. They’re so close to the open palace gates now, and there’s a flurry of activity happening just beyond them.

“You said I’m not dying," Yong-ha says, voice weak, barely papering over clear terror now, "but it feels like I am.” 

Jae-shin’s chest constricts. “You’re fine,” he says. “You’ll be fine.” He tries to smile — it’s too tight, he knows. “You’re Gu Yong-ha.”

Yong-ha’s hand has been flopping loosely with each step, but at that, his fingers grip Jae-shin’s shoulder, hard. 

“The finest physicians in Joseon are in the palace,” says Seon-joon, with a slightly desperate edge. “Professor Jung may be back from Hwaseong.”

Yong-ha laughs. He stumbles, and the two of them lurch to keep hold of him. “Hwaseong again. Not a spectator.”

“What are you talking about?” says Jae-shin. Yong-ha is listing alarmingly, more and more of his weight falling into Jae-shin’s side until Seon-joon compensates and pulls him back the other way. “Hey! Yeorim. Gu Yong-ha!”

“What?” He sounds annoyed and half-awake, like he used to on the rare occasions that Jae-shin would rise first, back when Jae-shin sometimes took the spare bedding that was always set aside for him in Yong-ha’s room at Sungkyunkwan. 

“Don’t. The physician is coming.” The man is sprinting toward them, along with several attendants and guards carrying a litter and supplies. Yoon-hee is with them, too.

Yong-ha’s head falls onto Jae-shin’s shoulder. He mumbles something.

“Quickly, quickly,” the physician barks as he reaches them, and under his direction, Jae-shin and Seon-joon pass Yong-ha into the hands of the attendants. For a brief moment, Yong-ha’s fingers catch on the sleeve of Jae-shin’s dongdari, and then his warm weight is completely gone. 

The attendants move at a swift pace despite carrying an injured man on a litter. Jae-shin immediately jogs after them, Yoon-hee and Seon-joon on his heels. He’s vaguely aware of Yoon-hee breathlessly saying something about the guards and a manhunt, but he only has eyes for the limp arm hanging over the edge of the litter.

The guards at the gate look askance at a fellow guard and two Sungkyunkwan professors covered in blood following the physician and his staff, but Yoon-hee must have made some explanations because no one stops them until they descend into the nearest palace building and reach a door that Jae-shin has never been through before. There, one of the men not carrying the litter turns and says, “Hold.”

Jae-shin cranes his neck to see what’s happening as the physician and his attendants carry Yong-ha inside, but the door shuts. The man left outside with them plants a hand in the center of Jae-shin’s chest when he tries to step forward.

“Physician Choi is at work. Wait here,” says the attendant.

“ _Wait_ here?” Jae-shin says incredulously, hand clenching into a fist.

Yoon-hee catches his arm and says, “Seonbae.” He looks down at her. Her face looks pinched and her eyes are shining with unshed tears. She tugs him back, and he lets her. 

The attendant casts them all with a dubious look, and then he enters the room and closes the door behind himself.

Yoon-hee’s grip is tight on Jae-shin’s elbow. After a moment, Seon-joon lifts a hand and rests it on his opposite shoulder. 

Jae-shin has never considered the prospect of a Joseon without Yong-ha. He is immutable. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, striking a man in the face with an open palm will break his nose, and Gu Yong-ha is an irrepressible, vain, brilliant flirt. He is a constant — impossible and infuriating and painfully loyal, an essential thread in the fabric of Jae-shin’s life. If he dies —

The three of them wait together.

*

When the door finally opens, Jae-shin jerks to full alertness. A man steps out of the infirmary and beckons to him.

He glances to his right and finds Yoon-hee and Seon-joon fast asleep, leaning together on the bench beside him. They’re holding hands in their sleep for hours, Yoon-hee with her cheek mashed against Seon-joon’s shoulder and Seon-joon’s head resting atop hers.

Jae-shin hesitates for a long moment, then leaves them to rest. He steps into the infirmary and follows the attendant past rows of empty cots and jars of herbs and medicinal supplies until they reach an occupied bed. Gu Yong-ha looks gray, hands folded over his chest. He lies unnaturally still. Even in his sleep, he normally rolls around, kicks, and gravitates to the nearest warm object. 

Jae-shin tears his eyes away to look at the doctor standing by the bed. “He’s...” He swallows. He’ll unravel. “Is he—?”

“Young Master Gu will be well,” says the physician. “He’s sleeping with the aid of opium.”

The rush of relief sends the infirmary spinning. Without fully intending to, Moon Jae-shin drops into a squat. He tucks his chin to his chest and draws a deep, shuddering breath. His ears are ringing. 

The physician’s footsteps scuff the floor softly nearby. “You may stay a few moments, if you’d like. If the professors wake, I’ll have an attendant send them in.”

He nods, mouth dry and heart pounding, and he manages to scrape himself up off the floor once the kind-faced doctor takes his leave.

Now that he looks more closely, he can see Yong-ha’s chest steadily rising and falling. He’s been changed into clean white sokgot that doesn't belong to him that he’ll undoubtedly complain about endlessly when he’s awake again. The blankets hide the state of his leg.

Carefully, mindful not to jostle him, Jae-shin perches on the edge of the cot beside his hip. He hesitates, then lightly rests his fingers against Yong-ha's side so he can feel it rise and fall. 

Yong-ha has always been able to talk himself out of trouble just as fast as he talked himself into it. For all his foibles, he’s the most competent person Jae-shin knows. He’s never needed Jae-shin to rescue him from anything more serious than physical exertion or silly fears of ghosts, and he assiduously avoids situations that could put him in danger. Moon Jae-shin has never had to worry about him in this way before. 

It has taken at least ten years off his life.

“Geol-oh.” The voice is rough and slurred, soft and barely awake, but Jae-shin jumps as if his name has been shouted.

“You’re supposed to be asleep.”

Yong-ha’s eyes look heavy, but his words prove he’s as sharp as ever. “That’s not how you greet your closest of friends who had a great big arrow in his leg.” His hand twitches, then he manages to lift it just off the cot, extended toward Jae-shin. 

Jae-shin takes it. It seems like a bad idea to let him exert himself like that.

Yong-ha pushes further, because he wouldn’t be Gu Yong-ha if he didn’t. He tries to lift their joined hands higher, toward Jae-shin’s face, and after a moment, Jae-shin realizes what he’s trying to do and that Yong-ha probably expects him to argue with him.

He pulls Yong-ha’s hand up. If memory serves, Yong-ha had once taken this opportunity to rub Jae-shin’s hand all over his face while rocking back and forth. It wouldn't be Jae-shin’s style. But pressing the back of Yong-ha's hand to his cheek: that, he can do.

Yong-ha’s happiness lights his whole face. “I knew it would be fine,” he lies, and an exhausted smile tugs at the corners of his mouth as he looks squarely, knowingly, at Jae-shin. “I’m Gu Yong-ha.”

Jae-shin stares at him, disbelieving, and then he barks a laugh.

*

Neither the city nor the royal guard find the archer. Each time Jae-shin steps into the street he listens for the sound of running feet on slate roofs, but no arrows appear. Even the Blue Messengers wisely seem to have gone into hiding.

The archer’s targets had been clear: only Jae-shin, Yoon-hee, and Yong-ha had come under fire. Jae-shin would have to be a fool to think it a coincidence that the three of them were attacked while on their way to see the king — after Yong-ha loudly announced that fact in the market — during the final stages of the controversial move to Hwaseong.

Minister of War Ha is long gone and Left Prime Minister Lee now stands behind the king, but there are plenty of wealthy, powerful people remaining who are furious about their loss of status as the king moves the court and redistributes wealth.

Jae-shin throws himself into the investigation whole-heartedly, interviewing the frightened commoners who took cover in the square during the attack, following the trail of the fleeing archer until it’s lost at Mapo Pier. He threatens, cajoles, and listens to countless hours of ultimately useless testimony. He dresses in familiar, comfortable old rags and loiters outside the gates of lofty estates; he makes friends with tradespeople entering the homes of known malcontents and buys rounds of drinks for disgruntled servants. These are tactics worthy of Gu Yong-ha, Jae-shin thinks, and then he hurriedly strides after his next target.

Yoon-hee and Seon-joon are behind the walls of Sungkyunkwan, undoubtedly with frequent visits from a former Red Messenger to watch over them. Yong-ha convalesces in the palace for several days and then is escorted to a fabulously wealthy home that has always bristled with a staff of highly-paid personal bodyguards. His father is a deeply paranoid man and Yong-ha will be fine, Jae-shin tells himself.

Jae-shin’s own father and the majority of their household have already moved to Hwaseong, and he gives leave to the few remaining servants tasked with closing up the estate when it becomes clear they’ve all heard what had happened and are uneasy being near him. Jae-shin spends two nights lying awake in a mostly-empty home, sword beneath the bedding, before it finally becomes clear that an attack isn’t coming. He wishes it would. He spends his days and nights investigating, preferring to be busy, because when he isn’t, he lies staring at the ceiling and thinking in ways he never has before. 

He thinks about the bewildered shock on Yong-ha’s face as he staggered and began to fall — how the world had stopped. He thinks about how his own vision had tunneled, how sound had fallen away, in the instant before the physician told him Yong-ha would be fine. About the shattering thought of a beautiful new Joseon but without Gu Yong-ha to enjoy it. About the reforms instituted by the king last year. About the sly tilt of Yong-ha’s smiles and the familiar grip of his warm, clever hands on Jae-shin's face, and the possibility that he will remain in Hanseong when Jae-shin leaves. Thinking of Yong-ha feels like a soft spot, like poking a raw nerve. Like something he didn't know was always inside him has dislodged and he doesn’t know where he wants it to land.

All things considered, Moon Jae-shin would prefer a fight.

*

Yong-ha lasts exactly three days laid up in his father’s household before he begins sending Jae-shin increasingly desperate summons. The messages start out cool and casual and quickly escalate to wild claims. 

A bored Gu Yong-ha is a dangerous Gu Yong-ha, Jae-shin knows, and Yong-ha is injured and could surely use the company. Still, Jae-shin can't help but think that Yong-ha will read days of confusion and reluctant thoughts all over Jae-shin's face as soon as he darkens the Gu doorstep, and he drags his feet until the messages stop entirely.

That alarms Jae-shin sufficiently that he goes to the Gu household immediately.

He finds Yong-ha being harangued by his father. The servant showing him through the house hesitates outside the door to a room that Jae-shin has never entered before. He thinks it's where Yong-ha's father conducts his business.

Merchant Gu's voice carries, as it always does. "I'm watching out for you, you know! My only son!"

"Ah, and it is purely a coincidence that what's best for me is also what would be best for your account books." Yong-ha is trying to sound light and airy, Jae-shin thinks, but his voice is tight. Then the servant rolls the door back.

Yong-ha is lying amid an enormous pile of bedding, bandaged leg propped up on a stool that undoubtedly cost more than Jae-shin's entire wardrobe, while his father sits before a desk covered in account books. Both of them turn to look at the door.

"Geol-oh, finally," says Yong-ha, as if it was a surety that he would come. 

"Oh, it's you," says Merchant Gu dismissively, looking away, but then he brightens and turns back toward Jae-shin again. "Soron boy, come now, convince my foolish son that displaying filial piety for once in his sorry life is in his best interests."

Behind his father's back, Yong-ha pulls a truly ugly face of exasperation. He has regained some of his color but his face looks pinched. 

"I won't marry some well-connected poor girl whose family has sold her to you like a cut of beef," he says.

If his father hears the iron in Yong-ha's voice, he gives no sign of it. "If you had a wife, she would be taking care of you right now!" he insists. He pauses, a thought clearly crawling across his expression. "Or a husband."

It figures that Merchant Gu would immediately look at last year's royal reforms as an opportunity to broaden the market of potential matches whose family connections would strengthen his business.

Jae-shin glances at Yong-ha. He looks like he's giving serious consideration to rolling over to his father and smothering him with a bolster.

"Hey, Yeorim," he says. "Want to get out of here?"

Yong-ha lifts his head abruptly. "I thought you were never going to ask," he says, pushing himself up to a sitting position. "Help me up."

"Where do you think you're going?" Merchant Gu demands, slapping his hands down on his desk. Jae-shin ignores him, stepping over and hauling Yong-ha to his feet — well, his foot, since he's avoiding putting weight on one leg. 

Yong-ha hooks his arm across the back of Jae-shin's neck and leans on him as Jae-shin steadies him with a hand on his opposite hip. Yong-ha's hands are soft and slightly cool and he fits against Jae-shin's side as if he belongs there, which Jae-shin tries not to notice. 

"Your father asked you a question!" Merchant Gu shouts, and he throws a brush.

Yong-ha sighs. He sounds tired, which he shouldn't; Yong-ha is always an endless font of energy. He can stand up for himself, but he's plainly miserable trapped here under his father's thumb. It's not right.

"He's coming to stay with me," Jae-shin says over his shoulder, and Yong-ha, who was previously steadily limping toward the door, nearly trips.

"What?" say father and son at the same time.

Jae-shin doesn't repeat himself. They heard him. He helps Yong-ha past the servant who's still waiting at the door.

"That's—" sputters Yong-ha's father. "It isn't — proper?" He sounds deeply unsure. Societal norms have yet to catch up with last year's expansion of the marriage laws.

Jae-shin shrugs, and Yong-ha laughs as soon as he feels him do it. 

Jae-shin slept in Yong-ha's room enough times as a teenager unwilling to return home that he could find his way through these well-appointed halls in his dreams. Merchant Gu doesn't follow them.

"That was quite the dramatic rescue, Geol-oh," Yong-ha says, beaming. "I'm impressed." If he had his hands free rather than clutching at Jae-shin, Jae-shin suspects he'd be applauding.

"You don't have to come."

Yong-ha hurriedly pats his chest. "No no, you can't take it back now." He glances back at the servant, who's following them at a respectful distance. "Beom-seok, I'm going to stay in the household of Minister Moon for a few days. Make sure to pack the new black silk with the flowers and the green sash, my boar brush, the books on my table—"

This will go on for days if Jae-shin doesn't stop it, and the last thing he wants to do is think about Yong-ha bringing what he strongly suspects are red books into his father's home. "You stopped writing," Jae-shin says. The servant Beom-seok looks relieved, hurrying to carry out his orders.

"Drastic measures were required," Yong-ha says, clucking at him, confirming Jae-shin's suspicion that Yong-ha knew that if he went silent, Jae-shin would come. "I wrote to you for days, Geol-oh. Days!"

His delivery is unconcerned as ever, airily chiding, but Jae-shin thinks he's genuinely asking, too. 

"Sorry," he says, as he helps lower Yong-ha to sit in the bedding that's been left unrolled. Given the untidy piles of books, papers, and fabric surrounding it, this is probably where Yong-ha has been spending the bulk of his time. "I've been busy."

Yong-ha studies his face. Jae-shin determinedly looks back at him with a steady gaze.

"I suppose you have," he says.

*

This is surely among Jae-shin's all-time worst ideas.

Yong-ha is used to the finest things in life. He's going to be less than pleased to find himself in an estate that has been mostly closed-up and abandoned. A handful of servants chose to stay on when Jae-shin gave them all the option to leave with their pay, so food still arrives and there will be a trustworthy man or two who Jae-shin can task with helping Yong-ha while Jae-shin is out investigating or on duty for guard shifts, but this is foolishness. What is Jae-shin doing?

But when they arrive at the empty Moon household, Yong-ha doesn't seem surprised. He says, bemused, "Ah Geol-oh, living an ascetic life for Confucius to be proud of, as always," and seems happy enough to be installed in a pile of bedding with a stack of his books. He's clearly exhausted from the journey across districts, sweat standing out on his forehead, and Jae-shin automatically looks down at his leg despite knowing that his wound is hidden beneath layers and layers of fabric.

"And to think my father was concerned about impropriety," Yong-ha muses lightly. When Jae-shin's eyes snap back up to his face, he finds him smirking. 

Jae-shin scoffs lightly as he pulls a low table over to Yong-ha's arm. It's covered in books that Yong-ha won't be interested in and notes about Jae-shin's investigation, which he will be, along with materials for writing messages. He glances down at Yong-ha as he arranges the table. "He's been trying to make a match for you again. For how long?"

Yong-ha settles into the blankets. From the way they ripple, Jae-shin suspects he has languidly waved a dismissive hand beneath the covers. "You know him. He wants to boost himself above the other merchants whose businesses are staying here, and he's decided that an advantageous match for me can deliver it to him."

"You didn't say anything." Not to Jae-shin. For someone who spends a considerable amount of time being talked at by Yong-ha, Jae-shin hasn't heard a word on the topic, but Kim Yoon-hee clearly had. "Is this why you've been such a weird punk lately?"

"I've been nothing but charming, I'm sure," says Yong-ha smoothly. 

Jae-shin's shoulders set. "You've avoided the topic every time I've asked why you won't move to Hwaseong."

"Aigoo, are you going to threaten a wounded man?" Yong-ha asks, face crumpling up with a melodramatic show of blatantly false sudden pain, as he rubs at his thigh under the blankets. 

"You're fine," Jae-shin says shortly, though he does need to remember to ensure that the physician who was making house visits, who Yong-ha complained about in his letters, now comes here instead.

Yong-ha can be deeply stubborn, when he wants to be. Jae-shin has never known anyone who can dig their heels in quite like Gu Yong-ha. He's quick and changeable right up until he sets his mind to something, and then he becomes like a mountain, absolutely immovable.

The set of his jaw has that look to it now; the mountain look. "I'm near death's door," Yong-ha says. "I'll just do some reading for sustenance." He reaches for the neat stack of reading material left by the Gu household servant who had helped move him here, and he plucks out a book with a lurid red cover.

Jae-shin looks at him and looks at the book. Yong-ha studies it with rapt interest, turning the page, and then makes a low sound that goes straight to Jae-shin's groin.

Jae-shin says shortly, "Fine," and leaves the room as fast as he can without looking like he's fleeing.

*

While Jae-shin is definitely not at all hiding in his father's former office, one of the remaining servants comes dashing in to breathlessly report that a visitor has arrived at the gate.

Jae-shin comes up short when he steps outside and finds Cho-seon waiting beside the gate.

She inclines her head. "I have heard that Gu Yong-ha can be found here."

Jae-shin doesn't know how Yong-ha has already spread the word about his location, but he has also learned to stop asking these questions. He only ever gets one answer. He nods to Cho-seon. "This way."

It's impossibly strange to welcome the false Red Messenger into his father's home. He never knew Cho-seon particularly well. Yong-ha had a longstanding friendship with her, forged by being the two smartest people in Ha In-soo's orbit, but Jae-shin went well out of his way to avoid Moran-gak. But Jae-shin has fought against and beside her, which tells you a lot about a person. She regrets the wrongs done in the name of freeing herself and saving her family, he knows, and her devotion to Yoon-hee is unquestionable.

He always saw the same warmth in Cho-seon's face, when she spoke to Yoon-hee, that he felt in his own chest. That was never strange. He felt sorry for Cho-seon before she knew that Yoon-hee was a woman, but he shouldn't have underestimated the capacity of Yoon-hee's big heart.

Cho-seon is looking around as they walk across the empty courtyard toward the one wing of the home that Jae-shin is still using. He knows what she's seeing as they enter and leave their shoes outside the door. The empty shelves, the discolored shapes on the floor where furniture once shaded it from the sun. "The household is already in Hwaseong and I move at the end of the month," he says awkwardly, by way of explanation.

She smiles faintly. "Following the path laid by many fine figures," she says. "Half of Hanseong will be leaving us."

"Sungkyunkwan isn't moving," he says.

She smiles again. It's still slow and polite, as her smiles always were, but somehow it feels more genuine now. "And neither am I."

He knew that she wouldn't. Kim Yoon-hee and Lee Seon-joon are here, after all, and so is the seodang where Yoon-hee, in all her free time when she isn't instructing at Sungkyunkwan, teaches eager young girls learn to read and write so that they too could balance a business's account books or write poetry or one day be her newest students at Sungkyunkwan. The seodang is one of several such academies beginning to crop up across the nation, but this one has a very unique headmaster in a retired gisaeng and former Red Messenger. 

"You've seen no signs of another attack?" he asks her. Yoon-hee and Seon-joon are brilliant minds, but in this, Jae-shin would listen to Cho-seon above all others.

"None," she confirms. "And no Blue Messengers, either. All is quiet."

"This sounds very boring," Yong-ha calls down the hall, and Cho-seon's smile widens.

Jae-shin leaves them to their conspiring.

*

When Moon Jae-shin returns from his work as a royal guard late that night, he finds Yong-ha reading by lamplight. He has stripped down to filmy-looking sokgot, blankets drawn up across his lap, and has propped himself against more pillows than Jae-shin knew he owned. 

Jae-shin stands in the doorway. Yong-ha is lounging in Jae-shin's bedding with his topknot falling loose and his lower lip tucked thoughtfully between his teeth. Soft, flickering firelight washes over his face. He's studying a spread of documents across the table that Jae-shin left for him — Jae-shin's notes on the attack and his investigation. A hook of low _want_ curls into the pit of Jae-shin’s stomach.

Jae-shin can feel Yong-ha's gaze on him like a physical touch. He looks up from Yong-ha's long fingers, uncharacteristically dotted with ink, and finds Yong-ha watching him.

"This is where you’ve been sleeping, isn’t it?" Yong-ha asks. His eyebrows twitch up then down, so subtle that Jae-shin never would have noticed if he hadn't spent the last 15 years becoming intimately familiar with the shifts of Gu Yong-ha's ever-changing face. "You brought me to your bed, Geol-oh?" 

Jae-shin expects another comment, then; a joke, an arch remark to turn the question flirtatious. But Yong-ha doesn't add anything else. He only watches Jae-shin, his face disconcertingly still.

"I'll sleep in the office," Jae-shin says gruffly into the hush.

That strange, unreadable expression melts away from Yong-ha's face. It's as if the spell the room was under has been lifted. "But Geol-oh, what if my health takes a turn in the night?" Yong-ha bats his lashes as he says it, so Jae-shin is fairly confident it's not an actual concern. He has been inexorably on the mend since those first few days spent being cared for in the palace infirmary. 

He'd been too quiet then, lost in a haze of pain. Jae-shin dropped by once and found the physicians taking care of him during a feverish afternoon. It's unlikely to happen again now, he thinks, but the possibility sends a new stab of fear through him. At Sungkyunkwan, Jae-shin woke enough times to find Yong-ha refusing to leave his bedside, touching his forehead to check for a fever or curled up asleep with a bloodied rag in hand. Jae-shin can sleep here.

"Fine," he says, and before Yong-ha can crow or, worse, not crow, Jae-shin goes to fetch the spare bedding that one of the servants had placed in the office.

When he comes back, Yong-ha has pushed aside the table. "Something's not right," Yong-ha says without preamble, and Jae-shin freezes in the process of laying down his bedding. "You're convinced the archer was hired by Noron loyalists?"

Jae-shin forces his shoulders down from their defensive hunch and finishes rolling out his blanket. "I'm open to other ideas," he says, lifting off his uniform hat and setting it on the table, "but it seems likely. What are you thinking?"

"It's too obvious. There's something just beyond my reach." He shakes his head with obvious frustration, then carefully, stiffly eases himself down onto his back with a few winces as he jars his leg — genuine winces, Jae-shin thinks, not the ones he likes to perform to get his way.

Jae-shin turns away and focuses on stripping down to his sokgot so he doesn't have to watch Yong-ha in pain and so he won’t immediately move to offer useless help that Yong-ha doesn’t need. When he tosses his jeobok and baji over a chair, he glances back again and finds that Yong-ha has settled himself and shoved half of his mountain of pillows over to Jae-shin's bedding.

Jae-shin smiles to himself, then shakes it off. "You're ready?" he asks. It comes out more harshly than he means for it to.

Yong-ha makes an affirming, half-asleep sound and Jae-shin snuffs out the lamp and lies down. He stares into the darkness at the ceiling. They're both quiet.

"Geol-oh?" 

Yong-ha's voice sounds soft. Cautious. There's a crackling energy in the room, suddenly, like the moment before a lightning bolt strikes. Jae-shin isn't certain whether he wants it to. 

"Yeah?" he asks hoarsely.

The wait is excruciating. He waits. His heart thunders. He hears Yong-ha swallow in the stillness. 

"Thank you," Yong-ha says, finally. There's a thumping sound that Jae-shin realizes, after a moment, is Yong-ha blindly making an attempt to pat in Jae-shin's general direction, but they're lying too far apart for him to reach him. "You're an excellent host. I'm very impressed!" 

That's not what he was going to say.

"You don't have to sound so surprised," Jae-shin grumbles, because it's what's expected of him. Yong-ha laughs and audibly rolls away from him, blankets rustling, and falls uncharacteristically silent.

Jae-shin doesn’t know how he’s going to fall asleep. It’s been a long time since Sungkyunkwan, and he’s not used to sharing a room any longer, and especially not with Yong-ha. He’s trying not to think about what Yong-ha was actually going to say. 

He listens to Yong-ha’s steady breathing in the darkness.

*

Jae-shin wakes to find a snoring body, that smells suspiciously like the expensive soap Yong-ha imports, tucked up against him. It isn't particularly surprising. He's well-accustomed to Gu Yong-ha's restless sleeping habits after years of occasionally sleeping in the Gu household as boys or in Yong-ha's room at Sungkyunkwan. 

Given his injury, Yong-ha has been less acrobatic than he normally is in his sleep. Jae-shin used to wake up to find a leg thrown over him or Yong-ha lying in the opposite direction than they went to sleep in. This is much tamer.

Yong-ha is a line of heat pressed to Jae-shin's side. He's still lying on his back and has his face turned into Jae-shin's shoulder. His breath is tickling Jae-shin's neck and the stray hairs that have inevitably escaped from Jae-shin's topknot. 

It's good in a way that Jae-shin hasn't allowed himself to think about before. Comfortable, the same way it was to come home to Yong-ha reading in Jae-shin’s blankets last night. Yong-ha is warm and familiar. He's too quiet, currently, but clearly at peace.

Jae-shin turns his head infinitesimally to look at him. He was half-expecting Yong-ha to say something clever with his eyes still closed, but his mouth really is slack with sleep. He has gravitated toward Jae-shin the same way he does while he’s awake. 

Yong-ha is lying half-on Jae-shin’s nearer arm, which is dull with pins and needles, but Jae-shin’s other hand is free. Slowly, haltingly, he reaches out. He stops with his fingers hovering just above Yong-ha’s jaw. He hesitates.

Then Yong-ha grumbles and shifts his weight, and Jae-shin snatches his hand back, shuts his eyes, and breathes evenly. It's not a moment too soon. Yong-ha shifts again, and then his body goes stiff against Jae-shin’s arm. He cautiously inches off of Jae-shin’s pinned arm, and then the blankets rustle as he keeps moving.

When Jae-shin finally cracks an eyelid open again, he finds that Yong-ha has crept away from him and put space between their bedrolls, and now he’s lying with his back to Jae-shin.

He’s never done that before. 

*

The days and then weeks settle into a surprisingly comfortable pattern. Jae-shin does his duty as a royal guard, protecting the palace, patrolling Jongno District, and keeping an eye on the powerful malcontent Noron households that remain in Hanseong. There are still no Blue Messengers to chase. The Sungkyunkwan students are apparently growing wiser than in his day. They must know that the city is still on high alert for archers.

"You would have gone out anyway," Yong-ha points out, both an indictment of the Sungkyunkwan students' bravery and also accurate, scathing commentary on young Moon Jae-shin's foolhardiness.

Yong-ha is unable to carry weight on his left leg and is terrible at hobbling about on his own, so he spends a considerable amount of time limping while leaning on Jae-shin’s shoulder and ordering him around, especially when Yong-ha grows bored and talks Jae-shin into going out to visit the markets or a public house or, on one memorable occasion, Cho-seon’s school. The injury magically becomes life-threatening again whenever Yong-ha is being asked to do something he doesn’t want to do, but Moon Jae-shin finds that he doesn’t particularly mind Yong-ha making excuses to drape himself over him.

Their friends stop by, since it's easier for them to travel than for Yong-ha to do the reverse. For similar reasons, Yong-ha's customers begin to visit the Moon estate. Jae-shin comes home one day to find that Yong-ha has entirely co-opted his father's former office. It's full of silks and expensive cushions, vases and paintings Jae-shin has never seen before. Jae-shin has a vastly improved relationship with his father now, but he also enjoys picturing the look on his face if he saw what his previously staid, boring office looks like.

Yong-ha meets clients there, accompanied by the Gu family bodyguard that his father apparently sent over. Between that and the fact that Merchant Gu hasn't turned up to shout at them yet, Jae-shin can't begin to guess at what the man is up to. 

When Jae-shin asks, Yong-ha only says, judgmental and dismissive, "He thinks he's subtle but he doesn't have a gift for it."

Yong-ha doesn't try to repeat whatever he was going to say that first night, and Jae-shin wakes up every morning to find them sleeping a respectable distance apart. It's both a relief and, somehow, a disappointment. 

*

Jae-shin returns from another fruitless investigatory dead-end, burning with the hot frustration of being no closer to finding the archer who’d nearly killed Yong-ha, to find the Moon estate empty. No customers, no visiting friends, no Yong-ha — not even the Gu family bodyguard. 

It’s not so unusual for Yong-ha to venture out, these days, but Jae-shin often has an idea of his plans thanks to his constant chatter, and he doesn’t tend to go far while his leg is still healing.

This feels different.

By the time Yong-ha arrives at the gate hours later, Moon Jae-shin has gone far past pacing. He nearly misses seeing Yong-ha altogether. He was poised to venture out for a second worried sweep of Yong-ha’s favorite haunts in the merchant district when a flash of bright purple fabric catches his eye and he spies Gu Yong-ha slowly approaching down the street. He’s hobbling alone, leaning heavily on an unfamiliar stick.

Jae-shin waits at the gate, but his frustration at having been left to worry evaporates thinner and thinner as Yong-ha nears and he sees that he’s white-faced with exhaustion and his limp is more pronounced than it has been in some time. 

“What happened?” Jae-shin asks, and he steps up to him as Yong-ha stops in front of him at the gate. “You look awful.”

Yong-ha barks a laugh. “Your way with compliments never ceases to impress, Geol-oh,” he says. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Yong-ha says shortly. It’s not even a good lie, and he seems to realize it. He makes the effort to straighten up further and to look Jae-shin in the eye the way he always does. He wags an airy hand. “My father has been summoning me and I finally went, today. He asked when I was going to come home and it was a fair question.” He limps past Jae-shin beneath the gates and gratefully sinks onto a bench in the courtyard.

Jae-shin doggedly follows. “What do you mean?”

Yong-ha stretches his leg out straight in front of himself, patting at his eye-searingly purple jeogori, then glances up at Jae-shin. “I can walk again, Geol-oh.” He makes a broad, grand gesture down at himself and his walking stick. Lightly, he adds, “I’ve imposed on the Moon household for long enough now, don’t you think?”

Jae-shin stares at him. “You’ve never worried about imposing before.”

Yong-ha’s mouth tightens. 

“What are you— It’s fine if you stay.”

“Geol-oh, Geol-oh. You’re moving to Hwaseong in a few days’ time now,” Yong-ha says casually. “I’m only thinking ahead.”

“You could also choose to move to Hwaseong,” Jae-shin points out.

“But how could I leave our professors and Cho-seon?” Yong-ha asks. “They need my guidance, now more than ever!” He’s almost certainly referring to their personal arrangement, which does not need Yong-ha’s machinations. “And Hanseong is already losing a great deal. For it to lose its Gu Yong-ha too...” He shakes his head with a wrinkle of his nose. “It’s too much.”

He doesn’t mean it. Jae-shin knows he doesn’t. His tone isn’t light enough; he is almost making eye contact but not quite. But Jae-shin doesn’t know what he _does_ mean.

Neither of them says anything, for a moment.

“The king finds you amusing,” Jae-shin says curtly. He does — Yong-ha gets away with saying the sort of things that no one should say to royalty.

Yong-ha swings to look at him. His expression is unreadable. Then he supplies, helpfully, “You can’t imagine why.”

Jae-shin ignores him. “He values your counsel and your insights into the private merchants. You could have taken the civil service exam and won an influential position in the court, and talked rings around them all. You still could.”

Yong-ha tilts his head. There’s an amused, inquisitive smirk toying at the corners of his mouth. “Geol-oh, are you trying to get rid of me?”

“I’m asking you a question.”

“Are you? I haven’t heard one yet.”

Jae-shin narrows his eyes at him. “Why didn’t you join the government?”

Yong-ha wrinkles his nose. “Have you seen the uniforms?”

“Hey,” he says. “It was a serious question.”

“You think my answer wasn’t serious?” he says. “That fabric, aish!”

Jae-shin is beginning to realize that he has a habit of accepting answers like these from Yong-ha. Jae-shin asks or observes, Yong-ha deflects with a joke or a flighty comment, and life goes on.

Yong-ha often accepts Jae-shin’s deflections too, but not always. He used to push him to go to class and take his exams. When they were children, he asked questions about Jae-shin's brother when no one else spoke of him. He stood in the rain and shouted at him, tears in his eyes, when Jae-shin was knowingly walking into a trap set for the Red Messenger. Yong-ha accepts all of Jae-shin’s ways and will allow him to tell untruths to himself and others for a surprisingly long period of time, but when it counts, Yong-ha challenges him.

Jae-shin folds his arms and sits down beside him, and Yong-ha looks surprised, his eyebrows rising. “Just answer the question,” Jae-shin says, watching him with concern.

Yong-ha sighs and glances upward. He looks mildly discomfited — not the norm for Yong-ha. “I wasn’t welcome,” he says.

“That’s not an excuse. The king reformed the entrance requirements three years ago.”

Yong-ha is giving him an increasingly incredulous stare. “Have you secretly become Lee Seon-joon, trying to co-opt people into taking entrance examinations? Do you have a fever?” He reaches out and pats at Jae-shin’s face.

Jae-shin doesn’t smack his hands down. 

Yong-ha’s eyebrows furrow further. “Are you dying? Have you been bewitched by a gumiho? You’re poking at this like a bruise.”

“I’m trying to understand if this is why you won’t move with the capital.”

Yong-ha gives a sharp sigh that sounds genuinely testy. “Will no one talk about anything else?” he asks of the sky. “Hwaseong this and Hwaseong that. Having the same conversation over and over again. So tedious.”

“You’re really not going to come?” Jae-shin asks.

“I’ve said no several times.”

“You’ve mostly avoided the subject,” he points out.

“I’m saying no now,” Yong-ha snaps, and Jae-shin starts. He can count on one hand the number of times in their long association when Yong-ha has been genuinely angry at him. He’s bristling now, his shoulders stiff and mouth set furiously.

Taken aback, Jae-shin instinctively does what he knows best: meets fire with fire. “Friends for fifteen years and you can’t at least tell me why? What did your father say?” he demands. 

Yong-ha’s father is a self-involved fool who has never appreciated him the way he should; who looks at Yong-ha as a sharp tool first and a son second. Merchant Gu doesn’t see the warmth in Yong-ha. He doesn’t understand the idealistic streak that Yong-ha once tried to bury beneath sharp cynical manipulations and silly jokes. Jae-shin’s hand curls into a fist against his own arm as he sees again how answering his father’s summons has clearly thrown Yong-ha. Merchant Gu must have said something. He must want Yong-ha to remain in Hanseong and get married.

Yong-ha looks at Jae-shin, and something in his face, something that Jae-Shin can’t read, sets with a strange finality. “Did you know that in all this time, you’ve never asked me to go with you?” Yong-ha asks. “You’ve only wanted to know why I won’t go.”

He scoffs. “That’s not true.”

“No?” Yong-ha asks. His voice has that measured, dangerous tone, now — the one that has, on occasion over fifteen years of friendship, reminded Jae-shin that beneath the bright colors and the arch smiles lies a tiger. Yong-ha tilts his head, regarding Jae-shin. “So ask me now.”

Jae-shin stares at him. “What?”

Yong-ha, uncharacteristically, hesitates, as if he’d thought better of this course of action. Then he reaches out and lays his fingers on Jae-shin’s forearm, but not the way he usually does, poking and prodding. This touch is light. His hand is unsteady. 

”Look at me,” Yong-ha says deliberately, “and tell me that you want me to come to Hwaseong, with you.”

It’s unmistakable, what he’s asking. Jae-shin’s mouth opens and closes. 

All this time and Yong-ha has never openly acknowledged the way he feels for Jae-shin; has never articulated it in any way that wasn’t a joke. 

This isn't a joke. There’s no mirth in Yong-ha's cracked-open, vulnerable face. He has laid himself bare, held out his closely-guarded heart in both hands, and now he's watching Jae-shin with eyes that are too bright.

The bottom drops out from under Jae-shin's feet.

If it was never one of Yong-ha's jokes, if Yong-ha’s love for him truly goes beyond his love for a childhood friend — then Jae-shin’s own feelings suddenly matter in a way they didn’t before.

Yong-ha watches him, still. He waits, and he lets the silence linger in a way that Gu Yong-ha never does. Finally there’s the squeak of wheels at the gate, and several servants who Jae-shin recognizes from the Gu household appear with a cart. “Ah, yes!” Yong-ha greets them. “Everything out of the office, if you please. Inside there, the first door.”

As the servants bow and make their way across the courtyard, Yong-ha nods to himself and pushes to his feet.

Jae-shin rises after him. He has no idea what’s going to come out of his mouth, or what he feels ready to say. 

Yong-ha pulls back and smiles at him. It’s a terrible smile. “Geol-oh,” he says. “Don’t say anything you’re not certain of. Let’s not make this more difficult than it needs to be, shall we?” He reaches out and lightly taps Jae-shin’s cheek twice in quick succession. “Come see me the next time you visit Hanseong. Only give the great Gu Yong-ha some time to lick his wounds first.”

“Yong-ha,” Jae-shin says. His tongue feels thick and heavy in his mouth.

Yong-ha winks at him, and then he turns and steps out into the street.

Jae-shin stands frozen with his feet rooted to the ground until Yong-ha has faded into the crowds.

Yong-ha never looks back.

* * *

When Moon Jae-shin finally sees Gu Yong-ha again, Yong-ha has clearly dressed to impress. He’s wearing a riot of red and gold, with a delicate spray of flowers embroidered up the right side of his jeogori, all of it cut to flatter his frame. He moves along at a swift clip with only the hint of a limp now, leaning on a beautiful cane with an ornately carved handle. It’s hard to make out from a distance with his hand covering it, but it looks like it might be in the shape of a dragon head. Jewels glint from its eyes.

He looks healthy and smug and unbearably handsome. Jae-shin drinks in the sorely-missed sight of him like a drowning man, and is glad of the broad-brimmed hat shielding his own face. 

Yong-ha, meanwhile, is ingratiating himself to his host as only he can. “From Gyeonggi, you said?” he’s asking. “The flavor is remarkable. You must have made quite a fine deal to purchase these.”

Jae-shin knows for a fact that Yong-ha doesn’t like plums from Gyeonggi. The flavor is too sweet for even Gu Yong-ha’s prodigious sweet tooth.

Even the irascible gray-haired Bok Myeong-soo, formerly of Hanseong’s merchant district, blooms like a flower under Yong-ha’s flattery. “It was, it was,” he says, showing his guest to his table. “Why, I only—”

“Juennim,” calls Bok Myeong-soo’s steward, bowing deeply, “with deepest apologies for the interruption—”

“What?” Bok Myeong-soo demands, his voice cracking like a whip, but then he turns and sees Moon Jae-shin and the gisaeng standing behind his steward, and he stops.

“Forgive my presumptuous ideas, but I thought we might cement our newfound friendship with a small celebration,” Yong-ha drawls. He looks thoroughly pleased with himself. “I invited a few friends.” Then he sits upright with a show of concern. “I should have discussed with you first. Shall I tell them to leave?”

“No,” says Bok Myeong-soo, his eyes on the new arrivals. “No. Please, ladies, join us.”

Jae-shin keeps his head down and veils low as he follows the women up to the table. He has no idea how gisaeng walk in all of this fabric. It took a harrowing afternoon of hiccuping and women laughing at him for him to learn how to move well enough that he didn’t stomp around like a horse. He’s still the least graceful gisaeng of all time.

The four girls array themselves around Bok Myeong-soo and Yong-ha, giggling and moving prettily. Jae-shin has a new appreciation of how much work it takes to look so effortless. He takes the farthest seat from Bok Myeong-soo, which happens to be at the far corner, on the opposite side of the table from Yong-ha. He mostly sees the back of Yong-ha’s head as he speaks to his host, but from here, Jae-shin has an excellent view of the rest of the room, and of Bok Myeong-soo’s steward having a quiet word with a member of the house guard.

Soon-ja and Young-sook are keeping up a steady stream of chatter about how beautiful the house is, pouring drinks for Bok Myeong-soo, while Ji-woo and Kyung-ok serve Yong-ha. Yong-ha, as ever, looks entirely at ease, like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“That one’s very quiet,” says Bok Myeong-soo, and Jae-shin ducks his head further as the merchant and Yong-ha both glance down the table. “Tall, too.” He grunts approvingly. “I like that.”

Jae-shin glances up beneath his jeonmo. Yong-ha is looking at him.

“She’s not feeling her best, juennim, but she’s here to see you,” says Ji-woo, reaching out to press her small, soft hand to Jae-shin’s forearm. He swallows a desperate hiccup.

Across the table, Yong-ha’s head rises with a sudden jerk. They make eye contact through Jae-shin's veils and, for a split second, before he can catch himself, Gu Yong-ha gapes.

Then he snaps his mouth shut again. “The girl is overwhelmed by the magnetism of your presence, Bok Myeong-soo-ssi, I’m sure,” Yong-ha says. He gives Jae-shin one final sharp look and then turns his attention back up to the other end of the table — coming to Jae-shin’s rescue, as he has for fifteen years. “Can I propose a toast, to our new partnership and to the end of that messy business in Hanseong?”

“You mean the mess you created in Hanseong?” Bok Myeong-soo asks tartly. He lifts his cup. “Certainly.”

Yong-ha taps their cups. “I can’t apologize enough for speaking thoughtlessly that day; it was never my intention to see you run out of business.”

Yong-ha is, as always, very good at this. It _was_ his intention to run Bok Myeong-soo out of business, that day in the market, Jae-shin knows.

“It’s good to see you doing well for yourself here.”

“Yes,” says Bok Myeong-soo. “It wasn’t so difficult to quickly establish myself in this … town.” He’s not nearly as good at this. He can’t hide the sneer in his voice. 

Yong-ha’s theory was correct. Jae-shin knows it just seeing the way that Bok Myeong-soo looks at him. He loathes Yong-ha. He’s plainly furious, though he clearly thinks he’s hiding it.

Jae-shin trusts Yong-ha and his instincts, but until he sat down at this table, some part of him questioned whether it could all really be this simple — if it was truly possible that the king’s trusted Jalgeum Quartet advisors weren’t the archer’s target, that day, but Gu Yong-ha. Jae-shin had wondered if someone could be so petty, to immediately send an assassin for a few words spoken in the market. But Yong-ha figured out the puzzle, and he was right. Jae-shin should have known better than to second-guess Yong-ha when it came to hidden motives and manipulation.

Of course, that now leaves Yong-ha seated at a table across from a man who wants him dead.

“It’s a welcoming place,” Yong-ha says, smiling. “The famous pansori _Heungbuga_ was first performed here, wasn’t it?”

“Pansori is for the peasants,” Bok Myeong-soo says. “I’m surprised by you, Gu-ssi. I thought you were an ardent appreciator of the finer things.”

“I think you’d enjoy _Heungbuga_ , Bok Myeong-soo-ssi,” Yong-ha persists, blithely not reacting to the disrespect of having been called Gu-ssi. Jae-shin knows pansori. The epic tales told by a singer and drummer swept through Bancheon on a flood of enthusiasm. But he doesn’t know where Yong-ha is going with this. “It’s slowly rising in popularity with the yangban; I expect it to be all the rage soon. Do you know the story?”

Bok Myeong-soo glances over at his steward, who nods surreptitiously to him. The merchant leans back on his heels comfortably, smugly, and waves Yong-ha on. “By all means.”

Yong-ha takes a sip of his wine, smacking his lips with gusto, then sets it aside. “The youngest son of a poor family found a swallow with a broken leg in a field, one day,” he says, waving a languid hand. “Heung-bu was a kind, wise man who cared for all creatures, and he nursed the swallow back to health. She rewarded his kindness and hard work with the gift of a seed, which, when planted, grew enormous gourds filled with the most priceless treasures imaginable.”

The entire table is listening, now. 

“The family was delighted by Heung-bu’s good fortune, and he used his newfound riches to build a comfortable life for his parents and brothers. He invested wisely and helped his friends and neighbors. But Heung-bu’s oldest brother, the jealous Nol-bu, wasn’t satisfied. He saw what his neighboring brother had, and he decided that he was entitled to riches for himself.” Yong-ha’s smile is growing and his voice is rising and sharpening, as he speaks. Bok Myeong-soo is slowly lowering his cup to the table, his smug smile beginning to melt away, and Jae-shin finds himself unable and unwilling to stop a fierce grin from starting to curl across his own mouth. 

“Cruel Nol-bu caught a swallow of his own and broke its leg,” says Yong-ha, his eyes on his quarry. “And after he had fed it until it healed, that swallow flew away, too, and returned with a seed to plant. But when Nol-bu picked his first gourd and split it open, horrible goblins leaped out.” 

Yong-ha’s voice rings with the sinister absolute authority of a man who flinches at the prospect of anything remotely supernatural — who knows in his heart that goblins are real and they are to be feared with every fiber of one’s being. 

“And they ate the greedy Nol-bu alive.”

Silence hangs over the table.

“It sounds familiar, don’t you think?” Yong-ha asks brightly. 

He’s an unholy terror. 

He’s magnificent.

“You,” snarls Bok Myeong-soo, slowly rising from his seat. Moon Jae-shin tenses, coiled tight with anticipation, but the merchant doesn’t turn to violence. His arm shakes as he points down at Yong-ha. “ _You_ , you come into my home and insult me!”

“You wouldn’t have been insulted if you didn’t recognize yourself in the story,” Yong-ha tells him. “So really, you’ve just insulted yourself, Bok-ssi. It's an excellent pansori, though. You should see it performed.”

Even through his veils, Jae-shin can see that Bok Myeong-soo’s face is turning redder and redder. “I won’t stand for this!”

“You tried to have me murdered,” Yong-ha drawls, studying his fingernails with unconcern. He glances up at the man looming over him. “Of the two of us, I think I have the superior claim to offense.”

“It’s a shame that you’ve involved beautiful gisaeng in this,” growls Bok Myeong-soo, “but I’ve waited too long to hold back.” 

“Ah, yes, two entire months,” says Yong-ha. “Truly, your patience astounds me, Bok-ssi.” He smiles with smug satisfaction and leans forward as if about to confide a great secret. Condescendingly: “But I think you’ll find the shame is yours.”

“Guards!” Bok Myeong-soo roars, and Jae-shin and the four women at the table leap to their feet with the chime of steel. The women draw their swords from beneath their chima much faster than Jae-shin is able to do it — he has to rip off his jeonmo and veils first and then it takes him a moment’s fumbling to find the sword sheathed under his skirts, and he can hear Yong-ha starting to laugh wildly at him even as Kyung-ok kicks the table onto its side and shoves him down behind it.

A handful of bewildered-looking guards in ill-fitting house livery spill into the hall.

Ji-woo laughs. “This isn’t even fair.”

“No,” says Soon-ja, beaming, “but it’s going to be _fun_.”

Cho-seon’s four most talented students move down the dais and wade into the fight. 

Jae-shin watches the ringing clash of blades for a moment to confirm just how outmatched the house guard truly is (it is), and that the students will be more than fine (they will). Then he turns his attention to Bok Myeong-soo, who’s standing there staring with his mouth hanging open and hands hanging limply at his side.

“Hey,” Jae-shin says. “Scumbag.” 

Bok Myeong-soo turns to look at Jae-shin, and his eyes go wide. Jae-shin takes two strides forward and knocks him flat with one blow. The merchant rocks back and crashes to the ground amid the broken dishes. Jae-shin stands over him, hand clenched on the pommel of his sword. This pathetic old man, unconscious and splashed with spilled food, nearly killed Yong-ha. 

“Geol-oh,” calls Yong-ha, and Jae-shin spins to look at him. He has popped up from behind the table. He’s shaking his head, incongruously holding a pitcher of wine in one hand. He points down at the fight on the hall floor.

Jae-shin leaps off the dais and kicks the last remaining guardsman toward Young-sook, who laughs and delivers a beautiful spinning kick to knock him out cold. None of the students are harmed. No one even has blood on her sword.

“Your teacher has trained you very well,” Jae-shin says to Young-sook, who smiles and delivers a perfect bow.

There’s outraged shouting from behind Jae-shin. When he turns, he finds Yong-ha standing over the old merchant, holding the wine pitcher. Bok Myeong-soo is awake, spluttering and soaked in wine. “Where are the rest of my guards? Guards!” he bellows.

Yong-ha tosses the empty pitcher aside and picks up his cane. “They aren’t coming,” he says, and the merchant blanches.

Jae-shin jogs back up the dais, nearly tripping over his chima in the process. When he looks to Yong-ha, there’s a laugh threatening to spill out across Yong-ha's face, but he’s holding it back.

“Bok Myeong-soo-ssi, meet Moon Jae-shin of the royal guard,” Yong-ha says. “And four talented students from a highly specialized seodang in Hanseong.”

“I’m arresting you,” Jae-shin tells the merchant.

“For what?” he demands, struggling up to his knees. “What can you possibly arrest me for? You have no proof!”

Yong-ha laughs. “You mean aside from the six people who heard you admit to an assassination attempt, who you just tried to murder?”

The doors burst open. “We have all the proof needed,” says Cho-seon. She still glides like Joseon’s most beautiful, gracious courtesan, but now she does so wearing practical black clothing with a sword in hand and bow slung across her back. She shoves two men in front of her: Bok Myeong-soo’s steward and an unfamiliar man dressed in the house guard’s uniform. Both go stumbling to the floor; both are bruised and bloodied with their hands tied behind their backs. “This one passed the orders from Bok Myeong-soo to that one, who’s a talented archer.” She kicks the guard in the side. “And Yeorim wasn’t their first target. Is that of interest, Guardsman Moon?”

“It will be to the Hanseungbu,” Jae-shin says, with a hard stare at the archer guard lying prostrate on the floor. “They’ll testify?”

Cho-seon puts her boot on the steward’s back and leans in. 

“I will! We will!” the steward shouts desperately.

“I’ll kill you both!” Bok Myeong-soo screams. He’s really not helping himself.

Jae-shin glances toward the open doors. “Is that enough?” he calls.

“I should say so,” says Captain Yi, striding through with a handful of uniformed officers. “We’ll take this from here, Guardsman Moon.”

“Now that we’ve done all the work,” Yong-ha says, probably not softly enough. While the corrupt ranks of the Hanseungbu have largely been wiped clean, some things never change. When Cho-seon first contacted him and explained Yong-ha's plan, Jae-shin was surprised that Yong-ha had even managed to convince them to travel outside of Hanseong to this tiny farming village. They were left in charge of ordering the rest of the household guard to surrender, which they seem to have handled.

“This isn’t — You can’t do this!” wails Bok Myeong-soo. “He ruined me!” 

“Shut your mouth,” says Jae-shin, and he shoves him back down again and pins him there with a foot on his shoulder. The Hanseungbu are down on the floor pulling the defeated guards to their feet, while the four beautiful students gather around Cho-seon. Jae-shin hiccups.

“Just to confirm,” Yong-ha says thoughtfully, standing at Jae-shin’s shoulder, “there was a role for a gisaeng and a role for a Red Messenger, and you were the gisaeng while Cho-seon was the messenger.”

Jae-shin shrugs. The layers upon layers that he is wearing rustle with the movement. “The gisaeng was going to be with you.” 

Yong-ha’s face falls into shocked impossible softness. He blinks several times in rapid succession and glances down, hand fluttering.

"Yong-ha," says Jae-shin, lower.

Underfoot, Bok Myeong-soo lunges. Jae-shin catches the glint of something metallic rising toward his shin and begins to lift his blade — and then the ornate head of a cane slams into the merchant’s head.

Bok Myeong-soo hits the floor facefirst. A small knife falls from his nerveless fingers.

Jae-shin looks up. Yong-ha flips his cane right-side up again and examines the handle. It _was_ a dragon, before. Now one of the eyes has popped out. “Bok Myeong-soo's big head dented it,” he says with dismay, and Jae-shin stares for another moment before he begins to laugh.

Yong-ha glances up and smiles at him, and then he laughs, too.

*

As the Hanseungbu finish removing their prisoners, they insist on congratulating Moon Jae-shin.

“Good work, Guardsman,” says Captain Yi.

“This wasn’t my plan,” Jae-shin says. “Gu Yong-ha is the mastermind.”

The captain follows the direction of Jae-shin’s point. Yong-ha is currently perched on the edge of the flipped table, batting his cane back and forth between his hands and idly flirting with the oldest of Cho-seon’s students, who looks like she’s having the time of her life.

Captain Yi looks at Jae-shin, and she says dubiously, “Okay.”

“Great catch, Guardsman Moon,” says another Hanseungbu officer, as he drags Bok Myeong-soo past. The shouting merchant is bleeding from the nose and is already beginning to show the beginnings of an enormous black eye.

“I arrived at the last minute,” Jae-shin says. “It was Gu Yong-ha and—” Cho-seon catches his eye over the officer’s shoulder and shakes her head, clearly not wanting to draw any more attention to her role than need be. “It was Gu Yong-ha.”

It’s always Gu Yong-ha.

“The archer and the steward are already telling us everything they know; they just wanted to get away from…” Another officer clearly gets a look at Cho-seon’s expression, too. “Well.” He coughs. “They’re giving us good information. It seems they were responsible for the murder of several merchants in Hwanghae Province last year.” He congratulatorily claps Jae-shin’s shoulder, and only then seems to notice that he has just patted a man who is dressed as a gisaeng from the neck down. He blinks.

Jae-shin’s voice rises. “You wouldn’t come in until he had gathered all the evidence you need, and now you—”

“Geol-oh,” calls Yong-ha. He sounds a little breathless. Jae-shin gives the officer one last unimpressed stare and strides back up to the dais. This time, he just lifts the chima skirts so he doesn’t trip on the steps.

Yong-ha is looking at him strangely, then he shakes his head and says, “I don’t actually have anything to say. I just thought it would be for the best if you didn’t punch a Hanseungbu officer.”

Jae-shin glowers. “He deserved it.”

Yong-ha gives him a sidelong, wry look. “So I take it Cho-seon informed you of our plan.”

“She asked for my help.”

“She neglected to mention that to me,” says Yong-ha. All the warmth and laughter have begun to fade out of him again. He glances down at the head of his cane.

“Don’t blame her,” Jae-shin says. “She was worried.”

“Oh, I’ll blame both of you if I want to,” Yong-ha says mildly, but he smiles faintly as Cho-seon slips out with her arms around Ji-woo and Kyong-ok, the other two girls following at her heels like admiring ducklings.

That leaves the two of them alone in the great hall of a murderer with delusions of grandeur. 

It’s hardly romantic, but Jae-shin will take what he can get. “You once told me to go after the person that I love, next time,” Jae-shin says. He’s sweating beneath all the unfamiliar layers of fabric, but he’s steady as a rock. He knows what he wants. Who he wants.

Yong-ha, meanwhile, abruptly looks like he wants to dance backward. His face is a mask of cautious uncertainty. He’s no longer the man who just coolly laughed in the face of a powerful merchant who wanted to kill him. “That does sound like me. I’m very wise, after all.”

“You were right.” He takes a step closer.

Yong-ha is staring at Jae-shin.

“I wanted you to come to Hwaseong with me. Nothing is the same without you.”

“Of — of course it’s not,” says Yong-ha. His bravado is failing him.

“Move your shop or take the civil service exam; I don’t care, as long as you do what you want to. And if you don’t want to leave, I’ll give up my post and come back to Hanseong. I know you’ve always had a home in the market district, and the city guard still needs applicants—”

“Moon Jae-shin, don't be an idiot!” Yong-ha erupts. “Who do you think you are talking to? Of course I want to go — do you know how much business I’ve lost with the entire royal court gone?!”

Jae-shin blinks at him.

“My _father_ remained in Hanseong, and I stayed in the same city?” He shudders and shakes his head in horror at the thought. “No, no, this isn’t what I wanted at all.”

“Then wh—”

“I told you. I needed you to ask me.” His face is absolutely serious now, a sheen in his eyes that Jae-shin never wants to cause again. “Over and over, you asked why I wasn’t going, but you never asked me to go with you. I know I’ve been your shadow for fifteen years, Geol-oh, and it was gladly done. But I couldn't follow again if you didn’t want me there.”

Jae-shin reaches out and cups his clever, foolish face in both hands, and Yong-ha goes utterly still.

He has had a full month to think about what he wants to say, and it all flew out of his head the moment that he saw Yong-ha.

“I’ve missed you. I was stupid and afraid. I didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry,” Jae-shin tells him. “I should have been as brave as you were.” He huffs a soft laugh. “How could I not want you anywhere?” He smiles at him and leans in closer, conspiratorially. “You’re Gu Yong-ha.”

Yong-ha is beginning to smile — an overwhelming, painfully hopeful expression that makes Jae-shin’s heart clench inside his chest. 

Jae-shin kisses him. Yong-ha tries to speak for the barest of shocked seconds, and then he makes a ragged sound that Jae-shin has never heard from him before. His cane hits the ground with a clatter and Jae-shin feels him bunch both hands into tight fistfuls of his chima.

Jae-shin had tried not to think about this, but now that he has done it, now that he knows what it feels like when Yong-ha softly kisses him back, he’s not going to be able to avoid thinking about it ever again.

Yong-ha pushes him back. His fingers are unsteadily clenching and loosening in the fabric at Jae-shin’s waist. “You love Kim Yoon-hee.”

“I don’t,” says Jae-shin. “Not for a long time. I’m following your advice, remember? She’s not the one I’m going after.” He carefully sweeps the thin skin beneath Yong-ha’s eyes with his thumbs.

Yong-ha gives a choked laugh and yanks him into a wildly enthusiastic kiss that nearly gets him accidentally poked in the eyes before Jae-shin can lower his hands.

Yong-ha staggers backward, dragging Jae-shin with him, until he’s sandwiched between Jae-shin and the wall. Jae-shin feels like he himself is the one who’s pinned. This is what he had imagined it would be like to have Gu Yong-ha in his arms, on the rare occasions when he allowed himself to think about it late at night, alone with his hand for company. The ferocious give and take, the warm, solid body that’s been at his side for more than half of his life; Yong-ha taking everything Jae-shin will give and then coming back to greedily take even more. 

Jae-shin wants Yong-ha to talk to him again, incessantly. He wants him in his bed. He wants to come home to Yong-ha fussing and slyly mocking and trying to order him around, and caving under pressure except when it matters most. He wants to argue and laugh every day. He wants Yong-ha’s brilliant mind, his quick wit and his brave face and his secretly soft, kind heart.

“I forgive you, I forgive you; how did you know this was always my fantasy?” Yong-ha pants. He’s smiling like his face is going to crack for sheer joy, tears still shining in his eyes, and his hands are everywhere at once. It’s overwhelming.

“This, specifically, was your fantasy?” Jae-shin asks, incredulous. 

“You dressed as a gisaeng, kissing me against the wall and shouting at the Hanseongbu on my behalf?! It’s—” Yong-ha shivers against him, and because idiocy is apparently catching, Jae-shin shivers too, and then laughs breathlessly. 

Amid a lengthy rain of heated kisses, Yong-ha moans, “Geol-oh.” His hand is swiftly migrating downward, and Jae-shin, with regret, touches his wrist.

“Later,” Jae-shin says. Government reforms are all well and good, but he still doesn’t especially want to be walked in on by people he used to work with every day while Yong-ha has eager hands under the chima and in his baji, as he kisses the life out of Jae-shin and then back into him again.

“Soon,” Yong-ha vows, determined. He sneakily tries to reach below Jae-shin’s waist again but Jae-shin knows him and knows it’s coming. He catches his hand. 

“I promise.”

“You promise?” Yong-ha lifts his hands and holds Jae-shin’s face between his palms, the way he has for so many years, but his touch is reverent now. Jae-shin won’t knock him away again. “Be careful, Geol-oh. That could become a habit.”

“It already has,” Moon Jae-shin admits, and he laughs when Gu Yong-ha throws his arms around him and refuses to let go.

**Author's Note:**

> So some of this is based on historical fact (the reforms that allowed everyone to trade, King Jeongjo's wish to move the capital from modern-day Seoul to Hwaseong, the delightfully on-brand pansori _[Heungbuga](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT0J76MfQTk)_ ), and then some details are an alternate history inspired by the show's boundless optimism about the dream of a new Joseon. I hope this was what you had in mind, specialrhino! Thank you for your wonderful letter and the joyous excuse to play in a sandbox that I love very much!


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